I am trying to run code in R and I have repeatedly run into the very frustrating issue that, unlike in Terminal when you can just press control-C on the keyboard, or Python when you can just enter exit(), in R it does not appear to be possible to exit a command you are currently typing to get back to the basic command line-type interface. That is, when I'm typing some code in R, I have a bunch of plus signs to the left of what I'm typing rather than > symbols, and, rather than execute what I have typed, I want to exit it and return to having > symbols and thus be able to type a whole new command while keeping the R window and workspace open, I find it impossible to do so. Instead I end up having to just close the entire R window, save the workspace, and reopen it which is way more steps than I'm sure are necessary. I already looked around online trying to find a way to exit R commands in the situation I described, and I found:
1. "stopifnot("something that is not true")", which worked the first time I tried it but not the second (why? no idea)
2. "stop("string")", which did nothing when I tried it
3. "quit()", which also did nothing
I'm seeing a very strange issue with R (v 3.3.2, running on the command line of a CentOS 7 linux box). If I execute a command that goes over one line in the terminal, the output appears at the beginning of the second line of the command. This didn't happen with previous versions of R, though it does happen with later versions I've installed. I am using Putty as the terminal, but it also happens if I use xterm.
To describe it better, it looks like this:
> tmpvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal=1 [before hitting enter]
> tmpvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
> aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal=1 [after enter, typing overwrites the a's now]
If the multiline command outputs something, that output occurs on the second line and overwrites the a's. If there is an error, then the error message terminates properly and the next prompt follows the error message. So does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Update: After some more experimenting, I've found another odd behavior. If I use CTRL-R to search for a previous multiline command, and then execute it, the output or subsequent prompt appears at the same location in the command as where the cursor was. Here's another example:
(reverse-i-search)`1':tmpvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal=1[cursor on one before hitting enter]
[hit enter and then:]
>tmpvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaal=1
aaaaaaaaal=>
Pretty strange. Hard to describe so its hard to find any evidence of other problems like this on stack-exchange or elsewhere. My feeling is it has to do with the readline library but it is strange because this doesn't happen in the shell command line, only in R as far as I can tell.
Update 2: I've found a potentially more revealing way to replicate this issue. If you manually add a bunch of newlines (by jamming CTRL-V CTRL-J repeatedly), then hit enter, the next prompt jumps right back up to underneath the last one. This is not what happens in the underlying shell (bash for me), or in previous versions of R that I can check.
Just to have the answer out there in case anyone else has this issue, the problem was that my system was using an old version of the readline library, 6.2, and the issue disappeared when updating it to the current version, 7.0. So it would seem that even though later versions of R will install with the outdated readline, they don't exactly work correctly.
I'm doing some very basic commands in RStudio (in Windows 10), and suddenly/randomly the command prompt ">" disappeared. This is not the first time this has happened for me. Pressing escape, enter, or anything else doesn't get me back the >. Moreover, when I try to close RStudio, it just stays on "quitting r session" and never closes. I tried to embed a screen shot of the console I'm seeing, but I'm not sure if it worked. If anyone can help me with this issue (being able to get back the > and execute commands again) or direct me to another post where this was addressed, I would really appreciate it (otherwise I have to restart my whole system every time to fix it).
When I execute commands in R, the output is printed in the console. After some threshold (I guess, some maximum number of lines), the R console no longer shows the first commands and their output. I cannot scroll up that far because it is simply no longer there.
How can I access this "early" output if it has disappeared from the console?
I care mostly about error messages and messages generated by my own script. I do use a script file and save my results to a file, if anyone wonders, but this still does not help solve my problem.
(I have tried saving the R workspace and R history and then loading it again, but did not know what to do next and was not able to find what I needed...)
The problem is that when I run the code, there's no return in the console; I mean it does run the code, but does not return any output.
For example, if I write
v <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
v
I would expect in return
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
But it's not working.
I have version RStudio Version 0.98.1079 and R Version 3.1.1
Possibility 1 (until the + sign was mentioned): I was wondering if you had been doing a tutorial where they were demonstrating the sink function and you hadn't gotten to the point where it was reversed.
> sink('out.txt') # diverts all output to a disk file
> v <- c(1,2)
> v # output went to file
> sink() # sets the output back to the console
> v
[1] 1 2
Another way would be to call closeAllConnections:
> sink('out.txt')
> v
> v
> closeAllConnections()
> v
[1] 1 2
Possibility 2: To address the lack of response with a "+" showing at the Rstudio console ... that is a sign that the R parser "thinks" the entered text has not completed a full R command. It may indicate that you haven't typed a closing bracket or parenthesis. If typing one or two of those is unsuccessful and you keep getting mor +'s then you may be successful with typing the [esc]-key. If it is showing up immediately after a restart then you should check your code for correctness and make sure that the .Rdata file is deleted from your working directory. If you don't know what that means then you may need to search for the methods appropriate to your operating system. You could also have an error in the code of one of your .rprofile files.
In any case these two possibilities have nothing to do with Rstudio per se and everything to to with the typical behavior of an R console session in pretty much any IDE.
Do the lines still start with a "+"? It is also possible you forgot to close the brackets of a function. Try "}".
I had the same issue and none of the tips mentioned here were working.
Session > Restart R did the trick for me, possibly suggesting that I had a similar problem as andrewH but was not patient enough to wait for R to behave again.
This is a very old question, but I just had the same problem with a different cause, so I thought I would describe it here case it should be useful to someone else. I was getting the regular command prompt, with nothing more, no matter what I typed at the command line. I tried multiple returns, escape, sink, traceback, closeAllConnections (which did give me a response, "error: unexpected ) in (), but then went back to the command prompt and ignored a second traceback).
Anyway after half an hour or so of pulling my hair out, up pops "View(Mid2)". Mid2 is a tibble with 8.5 million observations of 88 numeric variables. I must have tapped it in the environment pane accidentally. I suppose it just took that long for the viewer to render it. I assume that all the other things I did hit at once, because RStudio crashed immediately thereafter.
The interesting thing about this particular version of the problem is what didn't happen. The red stop sign in the upper right of the console window, that lights when R is busy, didn't light. That is unfortunate -- but understandable, if the RStudio viewer is a different process. But also, when my computer is working hard on a really big computation or IO task, the fan usually starts, but it didn't. Don't know why. . I took its absence, incorrectly, to mean no such computation was underway.
If the lines in console are starting with "+".
Save your work and close the 'RStudio' or other tool which you are using and Start it again, it worked for me.
If you are using R Studio Cloud, refresh or re-opening won't work.
Only clue from the above posts or answers is your console will always start with '+'
In my case I tried all possibilities of closing braces.
And ")" worked for me when I typed that into the console and press enter.
sink() function did nothing in R Studio Cloud
A simple mistake might have also caused this problem:
A rather lengthy command left abandoned in the console is blocking the appearance of the result line.
Thus, the console only shows that line, but the result from any code run from the source, will not appear.
To solve this, just switch to the console, remove any remaining command and try again.
Experiencing something like that explained here as an unresponsive console to the R-Code running was just devastating for me when I experienced it. But luckly although I tried every trick explained in this page, it did not work for me. At last I clicked on the "To console" option available just below the Environment, History, Connections, Tutorial Tab on the R Studio. It solved the puzzle for me just now.
The best solution I've found is closeAllConnections and/or sink which almost always work
But as a stop gap measure, View()'ing always works. It's sort of a pain but whatever you wanted to print out, surround by View and you can see it