[R] Rterm

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 8 May 2004, Jason Turner wrote:

> Johannes SCHNITZLER wrote:
> > The second question:
> > I was trying to set the working directory while I'm calling a script
> > with Rterm.exe from the command line.
> > Something like
> > c:\Program Files\R\rw1090\bin\rterm.exe --vanilla "workingdir=c:/data/"
> > <test.r --args "Arg1" "Arg2"
> 
> Not sure - if you could pass the working directory as an arg, then R can 
> handle it from there - use the setwd() command.  What I usually do on 
> Un*x-like systems is to cd to the directory first, then start the R run. 
>   Something like....
> 
> cd "my favorite dir"
> R --vanilla ...
> 
> Since you're already specifying the absolute path for Rterm, the above 
> should work...

That's the only way.  The `working directory' is the directory from which 
you launch an application (although you can fix that by a shortcut).  R 
looks in the working directory for several things, e.g. a .Rprofile file, 
before it ever runs any R code like setwd.  If that is not a problem you 
can use something like (from a decent shell)

(echo "setwd(somewhere"); cat test.r) | Rterm.exe --args "Arg1"

to make the first R code run change directories.  Or you can have at the 
top of test.r

setwd(Sys.getenv("WD"))

and use 

Rterm.exe WD="c:/data" < test.r --args "Arg1" "Arg2"

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595