Options Settings

Description

Allow the user to set and examine a variety of global options which affect the way in which R computes and displays its results.

Usage

options(...)

getOption(x, default = NULL)

.Options

Arguments

Details

Invoking options() with no arguments returns a list with the current values of the options. Note that not all options listed below are set initially. To access the value of a single option, one should use, e.g., getOption("width") rather than options("width") which is a list of length one.

Value

For getOption, the current value set for option x, or default (which defaults to NULL) if the option is unset.

For options(), a list of all set options sorted by name. For options(name), a list of length one containing the set value, or NULL if it is unset. For uses setting one or more options, a list with the previous values of the options changed (returned invisibly).

Options used in base R

add.smooth:

typically logical, defaulting to TRUE. Could also be set to an integer for specifying how many (simulated) smooths should be added. This is currently only used by plot.lm.

askYesNo:

a function (typically set by a front-end) to ask the user binary response functions in a consistent way, or a vector of strings used by askYesNo to use as default responses for such questions.

browserNLdisabled:

logical: whether newline is disabled as a synonym for "n" in the browser.

catch.script.errors:

logical, false by default. If true and interactive() is false, e.g., when an R script is run by R CMD BATCH <script>.R, then errors do not stop execution of the script. Rather evaluation continues after printing the error (and jumping to top level). Also, traceback() would provide info about the error. Do use with care!

checkPackageLicense:

logical, not set by default. If true, loadNamespace asks a user to accept any non-standard license at first load of the package.

check.bounds:

logical, defaulting to FALSE. If true, a warning is produced whenever a vector (atomic or list) is extended, by something like x <- 1:3; x[5] <- 6.

CBoundsCheck:

logical, controlling whether .C and .Fortran make copies to check for array over-runs on the atomic vector arguments.

Initially set from value of the environment variable R_C_BOUNDS_CHECK (set to yes to enable).

conflicts.policy:

character string or list controlling handling of conflicts found in calls to library or require. See library for details.

continue:

a non-empty string setting the prompt used for lines which continue over one line.

defaultPackages:

the packages that are attached by default when R starts up. Initially set from the value of the environment variable R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES, or if that is unset to c("datasets", "utils", "grDevices", "graphics", "stats", "methods"). (Set R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES to NULL or a comma-separated list of package names.) This option can be changed in a ‘.Rprofile’ file, but it will not work to exclude the methods package at this stage, as the value is screened for methods before that file is read.

deparse.cutoff:

integer value controlling the printing of language constructs which are deparsed. Default 60.

deparse.max.lines:

controls the number of lines used when deparsing in browser, upon entry to a function whose debugging flag is set, and if option traceback.max.lines is unset, of traceback(). Initially unset, and only used if set to a positive integer.

traceback.max.lines:

controls the number of lines used when deparsing in traceback, if set. Initially unset, and only used if set to a positive integer.

digits:

controls the number of significant (see signif) digits to print when printing numeric values. It is a suggestion only. Valid values are 1...22 with default 7. See the note in print.default about values greater than 15.

digits.secs:

controls the maximum number of digits to print when formatting time values in seconds. Valid values are 0...6 with default 0 (equivalent to NULL which is used when it is undefined as on vanilla startup). See strftime.

download.file.extra:

Extra command-line argument(s) for non-default methods: see download.file.

download.file.method:

Method to be used for download.file. Currently download methods "internal", "wininet" (Windows only), "libcurl", "wget" and "curl" are available. If not set, method = "auto" is chosen: see download.file.

echo:

logical. Only used in non-interactive mode, when it controls whether input is echoed. Command-line option --no-echo sets this to FALSE, but otherwise it starts the session as TRUE.

encoding:

The name of an encoding, default "native.enc". See connections.

error:

either a function or an expression governing the handling of non-catastrophic errors such as those generated by stop as well as by signals and internally detected errors. If the option is a function, a call to that function, with no arguments, is generated as the expression. By default the option is not set: see stop for the behaviour in that case. The functions dump.frames and recover provide alternatives that allow post-mortem debugging. Note that these need to specified as e.g. options(error = utils::recover) in startup files such as ‘.Rprofile’.

expressions:

sets a limit on the number of nested expressions that will be evaluated. Valid values are 25...500000 with default 5000. If you increase it, you may also want to start R with a larger protection stack; see --max-ppsize in Memory. Note too that you may cause a segfault from overflow of the C stack, and on OSes where it is possible you may want to increase that. Once the limit is reached an error is thrown. The current number under evaluation can be found by calling Cstack_info.

interrupt:

a function taking no arguments to be called on a user interrupt if the interrupt condition is not otherwise handled.

keep.parse.data:

When internally storing source code (keep.source is TRUE), also store parse data. Parse data can then be retrieved with getParseData() and used e.g. for spell checking of string constants or syntax highlighting. The value has effect only when internally storing source code (see keep.source). The default is TRUE.

keep.parse.data.pkgs:

As for keep.parse.data, used only when packages are installed. Defaults to FALSE unless the environment variable R_KEEP_PKG_PARSE_DATA is set to yes. The space overhead of parse data can be substantial even after compression and it causes performance overhead when loading packages.

keep.source:

When TRUE, the source code for functions (newly defined or loaded) is stored internally allowing comments to be kept in the right places. Retrieve the source by printing or using deparse(fn, control = "useSource").

The default is interactive(), i.e., TRUE for interactive use.

keep.source.pkgs:

As for keep.source, used only when packages are installed. Defaults to FALSE unless the environment variable R_KEEP_PKG_SOURCE is set to yes.

matprod:

a string selecting the implementation of the matrix products %*%, crossprod, and tcrossprod for double and complex vectors:

"internal"

uses an unoptimized 3-loop algorithm which correctly propagates NaN and Inf values and is consistent in precision with other summation algorithms inside R like sum or colSums (which now means that it uses a long double accumulator for summation if available and enabled, see capabilities).

"default"

uses BLAS to speed up computation, but to ensure correct propagation of NaN and Inf values it uses an unoptimized 3-loop algorithm for inputs that may contain NaN or Inf values. When deemed beneficial for performance, "default" may call the 3-loop algorithm unconditionally, i.e., without checking the input for NaN/Inf values. The 3-loop algorithm uses (only) a double accumulator for summation, which is consistent with the reference BLAS implementation.

"blas"

uses BLAS unconditionally without any checks and should be used with extreme caution. BLAS libraries do not propagate NaN or Inf values correctly and for inputs with NaN/Inf values the results may be undefined.

"default.simd"

is experimental and will likely be removed in future versions of R. It provides the same behavior as "default", but the check whether the input contains NaN/Inf values is faster on some SIMD hardware. On older systems it will run correctly, but may be much slower than "default".

max.print:

integer, defaulting to 99999. print or show methods can make use of this option, to limit the amount of information that is printed, to something in the order of (and typically slightly less than) max.print entries.

OutDec:

character string containing a single character. The preferred character to be used as the decimal point in output conversions, that is in printing, plotting, format, formatC and as.character but not when deparsing nor by sprintf (which is sometimes used prior to printing).

pager:

the command used for displaying text files by file.show, details depending on the platform:

On a unix-alike

defaults to ‘R_HOME/bin/pager’, which is a shell script running the command-line specified by the environment variable PAGER whose default is set at configuration, usually to less.

On Windows

defaults to "internal", which uses a pager similar to the GUI console. Another possibility is "console" to use the console itself.

Can be a character string or an R function, in which case it needs to accept the arguments (files, header, title, delete.file) corresponding to the first four arguments of file.show.

papersize:

the default paper format used by postscript; set by environment variable R_PAPERSIZE when R is started: if that is unset or invalid it defaults platform dependently

on a unix-alike

to a value derived from the locale category LC_PAPER, or if that is unavailable to a default set when R was built.

on Windows

to "a4", or "letter" in US and Canadian locales.

PCRE_limit_recursion:

Logical: should grep(perl = TRUE) and similar limit the maximal recursion allowed when matching? Only relevant for PCRE1 and PCRE2 <= 10.23.

PCRE can be built not to use a recursion stack (see pcre_config), but it uses recursion by default with a recursion limit of 10000000 which potentially needs a very large C stack: see the discussion at https://www.pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrestack.html. If true, the limit is reduced using R's estimate of the C stack size available (if known), otherwise 10000. If NA, the limit is imposed only if any input string has 1000 or more bytes. The limit has no effect when PCRE's Just-in-Time compiler is used.

PCRE_study:

Logical or integer: should grep(perl = TRUE) and similar ‘study’ the patterns? Either logical or a numerical threshold for the minimum number of strings to be matched for the pattern to be studied (the default is 10)). Missing values and negative numbers are treated as false. This option is ignored with PCRE2 (PCRE version >= 10.00) which does not have a separate study phase and patterns are automatically optimized when possible.

PCRE_use_JIT:

Logical: should grep(perl = TRUE), strsplit(perl = TRUE) and similar make use of PCRE's Just-In-Time compiler if available? (This applies only to studied patterns with PCRE1.) Default: true. Missing values are treated as false.

pdfviewer:

default PDF viewer. The default is set from the environment variable R_PDFVIEWER, the default value of which

on a unix-alike

is set when R is configured, and

on Windows

is the full path to open.exe, a utility supplied with R.

printcmd:

the command used by postscript for printing; set by environment variable R_PRINTCMD when R is started. This should be a command that expects either input to be piped to ‘stdin’ or to be given a single filename argument. Usually set to "lpr" on a Unix-alike.

prompt:

a non-empty string to be used for R's prompt; should usually end in a blank (" ").

rl_word_breaks:

(Unix only:) Used for the readline-based terminal interface. Default value " \t\n\"\\'`><=%;,|&{()}".

This is the set of characters use to break the input line into tokens for object- and file-name completion. Those who do not use spaces around operators may prefer
" \t\n\"\\'`><=+-*%;,|&{()}"

save.defaults, save.image.defaults:

see save.

scipen:

integer. A penalty to be applied when deciding to print numeric values in fixed or exponential notation. Positive values bias towards fixed and negative towards scientific notation: fixed notation will be preferred unless it is more than scipen digits wider. The default is 0. Valid values are between -9 and 9999 where “relevant” values (for double precision accuracy) are in -6:319. Some invalid values currently signal a warning and are set to legal boundaries if finite. These may signal an error in a future version of R.

setWidthOnResize:

a logical. If set and TRUE, R run in a terminal using a recent readline library will set the width option when the terminal is resized.

showWarnCalls, showErrorCalls:

a logical. Should warning and error messages produced by the default handlers show a summary of the call stack? By default error call stacks are shown in non-interactive sessions. When warning or stop are called on a condition object the call stacks are only shown if the value returned by conditionCall for the condition object is not NULL.

showNCalls:

integer. Controls how long the sequence of calls must be (in bytes) before ellipses are used. Defaults to 50 and should be at least 30 and no more than 500.

show.error.locations:

Should source locations of errors be printed? If set to TRUE or "top", the source location that is highest on the stack (the most recent code with source information) will be printed.

show.error.messages:

a logical. Should error messages be printed? Intended for use with try or a user-installed error handler.

texi2dvi:

used by functions texi2dvi and texi2pdf in package tools.

unix-alike only:

Set at startup from the environment variable R_TEXI2DVICMD, which defaults first to the value of environment variable TEXI2DVI, and then to a value set when R was installed (the full path to a texi2dvi script if one was found). If necessary, that environment variable can be set to "emulation".

timeout:

positive integer. The timeout for some Internet operations, in seconds. Default 60 (seconds) but can be set from environment variable R_DEFAULT_INTERNET_TIMEOUT. (Invalid values of the option or the variable are silently ignored: non-integer numeric values will be truncated.) See download.file and connections.

topLevelEnvironment:

see topenv and sys.source.

url.method:

character string: the default method for url. Normally unset, which is equivalent to "default", which is "internal" except on Windows.

useFancyQuotes:

controls the use of directional quotes in sQuote, dQuote and in rendering text help (see Rd2txt in package tools). Can be TRUE, FALSE, "TeX" or "UTF-8".

verbose:

logical. Should R report extra information on progress? Set to TRUE by the command-line option --verbose.

warn:

integer value to set the handling of warning messages by the default warning handler. If warn is negative all warnings are ignored. If warn is zero (the default) warnings are stored until the top–level function returns. If 10 or fewer warnings were signalled they will be printed otherwise a message saying how many were signalled. An object called last.warning is created and can be printed through the function warnings. If warn is one, warnings are printed as they occur. If warn is two (or larger, coercible to integer), all warnings are turned into errors. While sometimes useful for debugging, turning warnings into errors may trigger bugs and resource leaks that would not have been triggered otherwise.

warnPartialMatchArgs:

logical. If true, warns if partial matching is used in argument matching.

warnPartialMatchAttr:

logical. If true, warns if partial matching is used in extracting attributes via attr.

warnPartialMatchDollar:

logical. If true, warns if partial matching is used for extraction by $.

warning.expression:

an R code expression to be called if a warning is generated, replacing the standard message. If non-null it is called irrespective of the value of option warn.

warning.length:

sets the truncation limit in bytes for error and warning messages. A non-negative integer, with allowed values 100...8170, default 1000.

nwarnings:

the limit for the number of warnings kept when warn = 0, default 50. This will discard messages if called whilst they are being collected. If you increase this limit, be aware that the current implementation pre-allocates the equivalent of a named list for them, i.e., do not increase it to more than say a million.

width:

controls the maximum number of columns on a line used in printing vectors, matrices and arrays, and when filling by cat.

Columns are normally the same as characters except in East Asian languages.

You may want to change this if you re-size the window that R is running in. Valid values are 10...10000 with default normally 80. (The limits on valid values are in file ‘Print.h’ and can be changed by re-compiling R.) Some R consoles automatically change the value when they are resized.

See the examples on Startup for one way to set this automatically from the terminal width when R is started.

The ‘factory-fresh’ default settings of some of these options are

Others are set from environment variables or are platform-dependent.

Options set in package grDevices

These will be set when package grDevices (or its namespace) is loaded if not already set.

bitmapType:

(Unix only, incl. macOS) character. The default type for the bitmap devices such as png. Defaults to "cairo" on systems where that is available, or to "quartz" on macOS where that is available.

device:

a character string giving the name of a function, or the function object itself, which when called creates a new graphics device of the default type for that session. The value of this option defaults to the normal screen device (e.g., X11, windows or quartz) for an interactive session, and pdf in batch use or if a screen is not available. If set to the name of a device, the device is looked for first from the global environment (that is down the usual search path) and then in the grDevices namespace.

The default values in interactive and non-interactive sessions are configurable via environment variables R_INTERACTIVE_DEVICE and R_DEFAULT_DEVICE respectively.

The search logic for ‘the normal screen device’ is that this is windows on Windows, and quartz if available on macOS (running at the console, and compiled into the build). Otherwise X11 is used if environment variable DISPLAY is set.

device.ask.default:

logical. The default for devAskNewPage("ask") when a device is opened.

locatorBell:

logical. Should selection in locator and identify be confirmed by a bell? Default TRUE. Honoured at least on X11 and windows devices.

windowsTimeouts:

(Windows-only) integer vector of length 2 representing two times in milliseconds. These control the double-buffering of windows devices when that is enabled: the first is the delay after plotting finishes (default 100) and the second is the update interval during continuous plotting (default 500). The values at the time the device is opened are used.

Other options used by package graphics

max.contour.segments:

positive integer, defaulting to 25000 if not set. A limit on the number of segments in a single contour line in contour or contourLines.

Options set (or used) in package stats

Most of these will be set when package stats (or its namespace) is loaded if not already set.

contrasts:

the default contrasts used in model fitting such as with aov or lm. A character vector of length two, the first giving the function to be used with unordered factors and the second the function to be used with ordered factors. By default the elements are named c("unordered", "ordered"), but the names are unused.

na.action:

the name of a function for treating missing values (NA's) for certain situations, see na.action and na.pass.

show.coef.Pvalues:

logical, affecting whether P values are printed in summary tables of coefficients. See printCoefmat.

show.nls.convergence:

logical, should nls convergence messages be printed for successful fits? Initially unset, which means TRUE.

show.signif.stars:

logical, should stars be printed on summary tables of coefficients? See printCoefmat.

str.dendrogram.last:

see str.dendrogram.

ts.eps:

the relative tolerance for certain time series (ts) computations. Default 1e-05.

ts.S.compat:

logical. Used to select S compatibility for plotting time-series spectra. See the description of argument log in plot.spec.

Options set (or used) in package utils

Many of these will be set when package utils (or its namespace) is loaded if not already set.

BioC_mirror:

The URL of a Bioconductor mirror for use by setRepositories, e.g. the default ‘⁠"https://bioconductor.org"⁠’ or the European mirror ‘⁠"https://bioconductor.statistik.tu-dortmund.de"⁠’. Can be set by chooseBioCmirror.

browser:

The HTML browser to be used by browseURL. This sets the default browser on UNIX or a non-default browser on Windows. Alternatively, an R function that is called with a URL as its argument. See browseURL for further details.

ccaddress:

default Cc: address used by create.post (and hence bug.report and help.request). Can be FALSE or "".

citation.bibtex.max:

default 1; the maximal number of bibentries (bibentry) in a citation for which the BibTeX version is printed in addition to the text one.

de.cellwidth:

integer: the cell widths (number of characters) to be used in the data editor dataentry. If this is unset (the default), 0, negative or NA, variable cell widths are used.

demo.ask:

default for the ask argument of demo.

editor:

a non-empty character string or an R function that sets the default text editor, e.g., for edit and file.edit. Set from the environment variable EDITOR on UNIX, or if unset VISUAL or vi. As a string it should specify the name of or path to an external command.

example.ask:

default for the ask argument of example.

help.ports:

optional integer vector for setting ports of the internal HTTP server, see startDynamicHelp.

help.search.types:

default types of documentation to be searched by help.search and ??.

help.try.all.packages:

default for an argument of help.

help_type:

default for an argument of help, used also as the help type by ?.

help.htmlmath:

default for the texmath argument of Rd2HTML, controlling how LaTeX-like mathematical equations are displayed in R help pages (if enabled). Useful values are "katex" (equivalent to NULL, the default) and "mathjax"; for all other values basic substitutions are used.

help.htmltoc:

default for the toc argument of Rd2HTML, controlling whether a table of contents should be included.

HTTPUserAgent:

string used as the ‘user agent’ in HTTP(S) requests by download.file, url and curlGetHeaders, or NULL when requests will be made without a user agent header. The default is "R (version platform arch os)" except when ‘⁠libcurl⁠’ is used when it is "libcurl/version" for the ‘⁠libcurl⁠’ version in use.

install.lock:

logical: should per-directory package locking be used by install.packages? Most useful for binary installs on macOS and Windows, but can be used in a startup file for source installs via R CMD INSTALL. For binary installs, can also be the character string "pkglock".

internet.info:

The minimum level of information to be printed on URL downloads etc, using the "internal" and "libcurl" methods. Default is 2, for failure causes. Set to 1 or 0 to get more detailed information (for the "internal" method 0 provides more information than 1).

install.packages.check.source:

Used by install.packages (and indirectly update.packages) on platforms which support binary packages. Possible values "yes" and "no", with unset being equivalent to "yes".

install.packages.compile.from.source:

Used by install.packages(type = "both") (and indirectly update.packages) on platforms which support binary packages. Possible values are "never", "interactive" (which means ask in interactive use and "never" in batch use) and "always". The default is taken from environment variable R_COMPILE_AND_INSTALL_PACKAGES, with default "interactive" if unset. However, install.packages uses "never" unless a make program is found, consulting the environment variable MAKE.

mailer:

default emailing method used by create.post and hence bug.report and help.request.

menu.graphics:

Logical: should graphical menus be used if available? Defaults to TRUE. Currently applies to select.list, chooseCRANmirror, setRepositories and to select from multiple (text) help files in help.

Ncpus:

an integer n \ge 1, used in install.packages as default for the number of CPUs to use in a potentially parallel installation, as Ncpus = getOption("Ncpus", 1L), i.e., when unset is equivalent to a setting of 1.

pkgType:

The default type of packages to be downloaded and installed – see install.packages. Possible values are platform dependently

on Windows

"win.binary", "source" and "both" (the default).

on Unix-alikes

"source" (the default except under a CRAN macOS build), build-specific variants of "mac.binary" (e.g., "mac.binary.big-sur-arm64") or "both" (the default for CRAN macOS builds).

Value "binary" is a synonym for the native binary type (if there is one); "both" is used by install.packages to choose between source and binary installs.

repos:

character vector of repository URLs for use by available.packages and related functions. Initially set from entries marked as default in the ‘repositories’ file, whose path is configurable via environment variable R_REPOSITORIES (set this to NULL to skip initialization at startup). The ‘factory-fresh’ setting from the file in R.home("etc") is c(CRAN="@CRAN@"), a value that causes some utilities to prompt for a CRAN mirror. To avoid this do set the CRAN mirror, by something like

local({
    r <- getOption("repos")
    r["CRAN"] <- "https://my.local.cran"
    options(repos = r)
})

in your ‘.Rprofile’, or use a personal ‘repositories’ file.

Note that you can add more repositories (Bioconductor, R-Forge, RForge.net, ...) for the current session using setRepositories.

str:

a list of options controlling the default str display. Defaults to strOptions().

SweaveHooks, SweaveSyntax:

see Sweave.

unzip:

a character string used by unzip: the path of the external program unzip or "internal". Defaults (platform dependently)

on unix-alikes

to the value of R_UNZIPCMD, which is set in ‘etc/Renviron’ to the path of the unzip command found during configuration and otherwise to "".

on Windows

to "internal" when the internal unzip code is used.

Options set in package parallel

These will be set when package parallel (or its namespace) is loaded if not already set.

mc.cores:

an integer giving the maximum allowed number of additional R processes allowed to be run in parallel to the current R process. Defaults to the setting of the environment variable MC_CORES if set. Most applications which use this assume a limit of 2 if it is unset.

Options used on Unix only

dvipscmd:

character string giving a command to be used in the (deprecated) off-line printing of help pages via PostScript. Defaults to "dvips".

Options used on Windows only

warn.FPU:

logical, by default undefined. If true, a warning is produced whenever dyn.load repairs the control word damaged by a buggy DLL.

Note

For compatibility with S there is a visible object .Options whose value is a pairlist containing the current options() (in no particular order). Assigning to it will make a local copy and not change the original. (Using it however is faster than calling options()).

An option set to NULL is indistinguishable from a non existing option.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

Examples

op <- options(); utils::str(op) # op is a named list

getOption("width") == options()$width # the latter needs more memory
options(digits = 15)
pi

# set the editor, and save previous value
old.o <- options(editor = "nedit")
old.o

options(check.bounds = TRUE, warn = 1)
x <- NULL; x[4] <- "yes" # gives a warning

options(digits = 5)
print(1e5)
options(scipen = 3); print(1e5)

options(op)     # reset (all) initial options
options("digits")

## Not run: ## set contrast handling to be like S
options(contrasts = c("contr.helmert", "contr.poly"))

## End(Not run)

## Not run: ## on error, terminate the R session with error status 66
options(error = quote(q("no", status = 66, runLast = FALSE)))
stop("test it")

## End(Not run)

## Not run: ## Set error actions for debugging:
## enter browser on error, see ?recover:
options(error = recover)
## allows to call debugger() afterwards, see ?debugger:
options(error = dump.frames)
## A possible setting for non-interactive sessions
options(error = quote({dump.frames(to.file = TRUE); q()}))

## End(Not run)

  # Compare the two ways to get an option and use it
  # accounting for the possibility it might not be set.
if(as.logical(getOption("performCleanup", TRUE)))
   cat("do cleanup\n")

## Not run: 
  # a clumsier way of expressing the above w/o the default.
tmp <- getOption("performCleanup")
if(is.null(tmp))
  tmp <- TRUE
if(tmp)
   cat("do cleanup\n")

## End(Not run)