Does R provide a similar command for debugging like Matlab's keyboard?
This command provides an interactive shell and can be used in any function.
This gives access to all variables allowing one to verify that the input data is really what it should be (or test why it's not working as expected).
Makes debugging a lot easier (at least in Matlab...).
It sounds like you're looking for browser().
From the description:
A call to ‘browser’ can be included in the body of a function.
When reached, this causes a pause in the execution of the current
expression and allows access to the R interpreter.
It sounds like you're new to debugging in R so you might want to read Hadley's wiki page on debugging.
Have a look at ?recover, this function provides great debugging functionality.
Related
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.
Is it possible to run something similar to a Linux R console (which uses GNU Readline) from within a C++ program using RInside? The best option would be, if such a console would have all the nice features like the autocomplete.
The background:
I have a big solver, which has a RInside-based plugin for running small chunks of R code during a simulation. It would be nice if the user would be able to switch it to "interactive" mode and check things out as they go.
Notice:
1. I cannot just run R as a separate program, as I need it to see my objects and pointers from the main code. 2. I know about callbacks in RInside, but they do not provide any console-like capabilities.
Code: I doubt it will help, but here is my code now: https://github.com/llaniewski/TCLB/blob/RInside/src/Handlers/cbRunR.cpp.Rt
using R and debugging, I often might have a function with several arguments set by default.
e.g.
foo <- function(x=c(3,4,5), y= 'house', dateidx = '1990-01-01'){}
Often I just want to manually run through some lines in the function, while using the pre-set parameters. If the parameter list is long, I have to type or paste each argument to the console manually before stepping through the function.
x=c(3,4,5)
y= 'house'
dateidx = '1990-01-01'
It's ok if the list of arguments is small but if there is a long list of arguments, it gets tedious. Is there some way to just copy the whole set of arguments, paste to console, and do something like unlist, so that all the arguments are passed to the console as if I manually passed each one?
p.s. I'm weakly familiar with the debug tool, but sometimes I find it easier and faster to just troubleshoot lines quickly and manually as above.
There is no easy pre-existing way to do this--mainly because this a problem solved by the debugger.
One could imagine hacking something together that might parse these parameters with a regex and set them automatically--or something like that. However, the effort would be much better spent learning how to use the debugger.
It should be quite quick to test the part of the code you are interested in with the debugger if you learn how to use it. RStudio has a visual debugger. Using this, you can simply mark the command you are interested in testing with a breakpoint and run the script. The script will run until it reaches the breakpoint, then stop there so you can inspect what is happening.
I am writing a tool in R having a crude CLI (Command Line Interface), which does non-blocking reads from a socket (that is working). I want to concurrently check for new commands, by reading a single character (if it exists) from the console in a non-blocking manner. A simplified example
repeat{
newCmdChar <- nonblockingReadConsole()
if (newCmdChar == NULL) doStuffReadingNonblockingSocket()
else switch(newCmdChar,
a = doThis(),
b = doThat(),
x = break)
}
Various experiments failed with file("stdin") in a nonblocking manner, and permutations on scan(), readLines() etc. One approach is described here How do you read a single character from console in R (without RETURN)? but it requires working through an open graphics device and I was hoping to avoid that.
Questions
is there any way to do nonblockingReadConsole() to get a single
character? If so, how?
better to explore some R GUI package? (I'm
a newbie, ignorant to those)? If so, suggestions?
Thanks :)
/george
I'm afraid that the answer is you probably can't get input from the R GUI command line in a non-blocking way. It goes against the single-threaded nature of R.
If you need this sort of behaviour, then write the human-interaction part in a different language and call R for the calculations. Or use one of the GUI toolkits, as described in the question you linked to.
Update: I've implemented the "open grDevice with keyboard callback" approach in the link cited above, and it is working out more conveniently than expected. Cheers, /geg
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.