I have just started to learn to code on R, so I apologize for the very simple question. I understand it is best to type your code in as a Script so you can edit and save it. However, when I try to make an object in the script section, it does not work. If I make an object in the console, R saves the object and it appears in my environment. I am typing in a very simple code to try a quick exercise on rolling dice:
die <- 1:6
But it only works in the console and not when typed as a script. Any help/explanation appreciated!
Essentially, you interact with R environment differently when running an .R script via RScript.exe or via console with R.exe, Rterm, etc. and in GUI IDEs like RGui or RStudio. (This applies to any programming language with interactive compilers not just R).
The script does save thedie object in R environment but only during the run or lifetime of that script (i.e., from beginning to end of code lines). Your code line is simply an assignment of object. You do nothing with it. Apply some function, output results, and other actions in that script to see.
On the console, the R environment persists interactively until you quit it with q(). So assigned objects remains for lifetime of your console session. After assigning, you can afterwards apply function, output results, or other actions in line by line calls.
Ultimately, scripts gathers all line by line code in advance of run for automated execution without relying on user to supply lines. Imagine running 1,000 lines of code with nested if/then or for/while loops, apply functions on console! Therefore, have all your R coding needs summarily handled in scripts.
It is always better to have the script, as you say, you can save edit correct, without having to rewrite the code to change a variable or number.
I recommend using Rstudio, it is very practical and will help you to program more efficiently and allows you to see, among other things, the different objects that you have created.
Related
I have a script with self-written functions (no plots). When I copy-paste that script into the R-Studio console, it takes ages to execute, but when I use source("Helperfunctions.R") it doesn't take more than a second.
Question: Where does the difference in speed come from?
I am aware of two differences between running code via the source() function vs. entering code at the R-Studio console:
From ?source:
Since expressions are not executed at the top level, auto-printing is not done.
The way I understand this: source() will not plot graphs (unless made specific with e.g. print(plot)), while the R Studio console codes will always plot graphs. I'm sure this will affect the speed of execution to a certain degree, but this seems irrelevant in my case, because there are barely any plot calls.
And:
(...) the complete file is parsed before any of it is run
I have been working with R for a while now, but I'm not sure whether this relevant for the speed-issue I'm having. Is it possible that completely parsing all code "before any of it is run" speeds up the execution of my helper functions script by a factor of a hundred?
Edit: I'm using R version 3.2.3.
The issue is not source() vs. console line code. Instead, it is an issue of how RStudio sends code from the source pane to the console.
When I copy the content of Helperfunctions.R and run it in RGui (instead of RStudio), the code is executed with nearly the same speed as when I use source("Helperfunctions.R") in RStudio.
Apparently, lines of code always (?) require more execution time in RStudio than in RGui. Even though you may usually not notice the time-difference when executing a couple of lines in the console, it seems to make a huge difference when, say, 3.000 lines of code are being executed in the R Studio console at once.
My understanding is that upon using source("Helperfunctions.R") in the RStudio source pane, the code is not actually sent to the RStudio console (which would have been slow), but is actually executed directly in the R language.
I need to understand an R script. Since I did not use R until now, I try to understand the script step by step. At the beginning of the script command line arguments (input files) are passed with commandArgs(). I know that one can access additional arguments for an R script with commandArgs().
But I just cannot figure out how to run a script with arguments in the interactive mode, so that I can print all variables used in the script later on. For example source("script.R") does not seem to take arguments.
My apologies if I am just not capable of using the right search query...
I think you're misunderstanding the use of commandArgs - it's for getting the arguments supplied when run through the command line... not the interpreter. If you just want to "supply arguments" when sourcing a file then just put those into the global namespace (just create the variables you want to use). Using source is almost just like copying the script and pasting it into the interpreter.
I am new to R and have been trying to use JRI. Through JRI, I have used the "eval()" function to get certain results. If I want to execute an R script, I have used "source()". However I am now in a situation where I need to execute a script on continuously incoming data. While I can still use "source()", I don't think that would be an optimal way from a performance perspectve.
What I did was to read the entire R script into memory and then try and use "eval()" passing the script - but this does not seem to work. I have ensured that the script has been correctly loaded into memory - that is because if I write this script (loaded into the memory) into a file and source this newly created file, it does produce the expected results.
Is there a way for me to not keep sourcing the same file over and over again and execute it from memory? Each of my data units are independent and have to be processed independently and as soon as they become available. I cannot wait to collect a bunch of data units and then pass them on to the R script.
I have searched a lot and not found anything related to this. Any pointers which could help me in this direction would be really helpful.
The way I handled this is as below -
I enclosed the entire script into a function.
I sourced the script file (which now contains the function) at the start of the execution of my program.
The place where I was sourcing the file, I am now just calling the function which contains the script itself i.e. -
REXP result = rengine.eval("retVal<-" + getFunctionName() + "()");
Here, getFunctionName() gives me the name of the name of the function which contains the script.
Since this is loaded into the memory and available, I do not have to source the script file every time I want to execute the script. Any arguments being passed to the script are done as env. variables.
This seems to be a workaround, but solves my problem. Any better options are welcome.
I am running a set of selected code on R. Like
source("/tmp/r-plugin-honli/Rsource-2704-quantmod.R")
There is no output. Only the prompt '>' flickered there.
I use 'killall' to kill the R session. But I don't know where is wrong on the code. Because R did not give any output. How could I know what's going on about the code.
I'd try two things:
Run the code interactively. As in, open the Rsource-2704 file and run its lines one by one.
If that doesn't replicate the problem or is not possible, you can take Joshua Ulrich's suggestion or use:
R CMD BATCH --vanilla Rsource-2704-quantmod.R out.log
Which will run the code in a batch mode and output the usual console lines to a file called out.log (you can name it whatever you like).
Instead of using print statements, you could also take a look at the browser() command. This drops you into an interactive session at the point where the command is put. This works particularly well when trying to figure out what is happening inside a function, although I don't know if your script contains them.
I've an R script, that takes commandline arguments, where the top line is:
#!/usr/bin/Rscript --slave
I wanted to interrupt execution in a function (so I can interactively use the data variables that have been loaded by that point to work out the next bit of code I need to write). I added this inside the function in question:
browser()
but it gets ignored. A bit of searching suggests it might be because the program is running in non-interactive mode. But even more searching has not tracked down how I switch the script out non-interactive mode so that browser() will work. Something like a browser_yes_I_really_mean_it() function.
P.S. I want to avoid altering the rest of the script if at all possible. My current approach is to copy and paste the code chunks, needed to prepare the data, into an interactive session; but as the script gets more and more complex this is getting more and more unreasonable.
UPDATE: for anyone else with the same question, it appears the answer to the actual question is that it is impossible. Once you start R in a non-interactive mode the die is cast. The given answers are therefore workarounds: either you hack your code (remembering to unhack it afterwards), or you refactor to make debugging easier. (This comment is not intended as a criticism of the answers; the suggested refactoring makes the code cleaner anyway.)
Can you just fire up R and source the file instead?
R
source("script.R")
Following mdsumner's answer, I edited my script like this:
if(!exists("argv")){
argv=commandArgs(TRUE)
if(length(argv)!=4)usage_and_exit()
}else{
if(length(argv)!=4){
stop("Must set argv as a 4 element vector. E.g. argv=c(...)")
}
}
Then no other change was needed, and I was able to do:
R
> argv=c('a','b','c','d')
> source("script.R")
In addition to the previous answer, I'd create a toplevel function (e.g. doStuff) which performs the analysis you want to perform in batch. The function takes the cmd line options as input. In the batch script you source the script that contains this function and call it. In this way you can easily run the function in interactive mode and use e.g. browser().
In some cases, the suggested solution (workaround) may not work - for example, when the R code needs to be run as a part of an existing bash script. For those cases, I suggest to write in your R script into the bash script using here document:
#!/bin/bash
R --interactive << EOT
# R code starts here
argv=c('a','b','c','d')
print(interactive())
# Rest of script contents
quit("no")
# R code ends here
EOT
This way, print(interactive()) above will yield TRUE.
Sidenote: Make sure to avoid the $ character in your R code, as this would not be processed correctly - for example, retrieve a column from a data.frame() by using df[["X1"]] instead of df$X1.