[Rd] How is the environment variable "R_USER" defined?

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 11/22/21 7:06 PM, Jiefei Wang wrote:
> Thanks for all your help!! It actually has nothing to do with the
> environment variables. The issue is caused by the backup feature in
> Onedrive as Bill suggested. I do not know what magic trick Onedrive
> uses here but it misadvices R to use its directory, not my local
> Document directory. The answer might be from Windows FAQ question 2.14
> like Duncan posted
>
> After those two user-controllable settings, R tries to find
> system-defined home directories. It first tries to use the Windows
> "personal" directory
>
> This is confusing. First, this FAQ is not about how "R_USER" is
> defined. Instead, it talks about how we find the home directory from
> "R_USER".
My understanding of the text is that R_USER is defined as (one of the) 
environment variable(s) which one can set to override what R understands 
to be the R "home directory"
>   Second, it still did not answer what is "the Windows
> personal directory". I think this is where the issue is. My Document
> still has the path "C:\Users\wangj\Documents", but there is a backup
> path in "C:\Users\wangj\OneDrive\Documents". Unfortunately, R believes
> the latter one is the "personal directory". I hope this can be
> clarified a little bit to avoid confusion.

The "personal directory" is a Windows term. R obtains it via Windows API 
call SHGetSpecialFolderLocation with CSIDL_PERSONAL (which is now My 
Documents), this is why the wording in rw-FAQ:

"It first tries to use the Windows "personal" directory (typically 
@file{C:\Users\username \Documents}).", which gives a typical value.

Best
Tomas


>
> Best,
> Jiefei
>
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 12:32 PM Bill Dunlap <williamwdunlap using gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is your C:\Users\yourname\Documents linked to OneDrive (either by your choice or by some administrator setting a group policy)?  If so, ou could unlink it using OneDrive's settings dialog.   Or you could set R_USER to avoid using ...\Documents.
>>
>> -Bill
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 8:47 AM Jiefei Wang <szwjf08 using gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi, I have a new win system and try to install R as usual. Somehow,
>>> the environment variable "R_LIBS_USER" is incorrectly pointed to a
>>> Onedrive folder. Since "R_LIBS_USER" depends on "R_USER", the root
>>> problem then becomes why "R_USER" is the path to the Onedrive. I did
>>> an exhausting search in the R directory and the only related message I
>>> can find is from EnvVar.html, which states
>>>
>>> R_USER: The user's ‘home’ directory. Set by R. (HOME will be set to
>>> the same value if not already set.)
>>>
>>> I guess that's another way to say "no document is available yet". I
>>> also took a look at my system environment variables but there are only
>>> two variables related to Onedrive, they are
>>>
>>> OneDrive=C:\Users\wangj\OneDrive
>>>
>>> OneDriveConsumer=C:\Users\wangj\OneDrive
>>>
>>> so everything looks pretty normal, I know I can correct this issue by
>>> manually adding Renviron but I just wonder where this default behavior
>>> comes from...
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Jiefei
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel