R.from.shell {this.path} | R Documentation |
Using R From a Shell
Description
How to use R from a shell (including the Windows command-line / / Unix terminal).
Details
For the purpose of running R scripts, there are four ways to do it. Suppose our R script has filename script1.R, we could write any of:
R -f script1.R
R --file=script1.R
R CMD BATCH script1.R
Rscript script1.R
The first two are different ways of writing equivalent statements. The third
statement is the first statement plus options --restore
--save (plus option --no-readline under Unix-alikes), and
it also saves the stdout
and
stderr
in a file of your choosing. The
fourth statement is the second statement plus options --no-echo
--no-restore. You can try:
R --help
R CMD BATCH --help
Rscript --help
for a help message that describes what these options mean. In general,
Rscript
is the one you want to use. It should be noted that
Rscript
has some exclusive
environment variables
(not used by the other
executables) that will make its behaviour different from R
.
For the purpose of making packages, R CMD
is what you will need.
Most commonly, you will use:
R CMD build
R CMD INSTALL
R CMD check
R CMD build
will turn an R package (specified by a directory) into
tarball. This allows for easy sharing of R packages with other people,
including
submitting a package to CRAN.
R CMD INSTALL
will install an R package (specified by a directory
or tarball), and is used by
install.packages()
.
R CMD check
will check an R package (specified by a tarball) for
possible errors in code, documentation, tests, and much more.
Where are my R executable files located?
In an R session, you can find the location of your R executable files with the following command:
R.home("bin")
For me, this is:
‘/usr/lib/R/bin
’