[R] R_LIBS difficulty ?

[Peter Dalgaard]

François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Hi, R people.
> 
> I'm shy reporting this, as a bug in this area sounds very unlikely.  Did
> I make my tests wrongly?  I'm still flaky at all this.  Let me dare
> nevertheless, who knows, just in case...  Please don't kill me! :-)
> 
> Not so long ago, I wrote to this list:
> 
> > (For now, [the library code] works only for me when I do _not_ use `-l
> > MY/OWN/LIBDIR' at `R CMD INSTALL' time, I surely made a simple blunder
> > somewhere.  Hopefully, I'll figure it out.)
> 
> Now using this line within `~/.Renviron':
> 
>    R_LIBS=/home/pinard/etc/R
> 
> my tiny package is correctly found by R.  However, R does not seem to
> see any library within that directory if I rather use either of:
> 
>    R_LIBS=$HOME/etc/R
>    R_LIBS="$HOME/etc/R"
> 
> The last writing (I mean, something similar) is suggested somewhere in
> the R manuals (but I do not have the manual with me right now to give
> the exact reference, I'm in another town).

?Startup gets you there soon enough (and help.search(Renviron) points
you at Startup):

     Lines in a site or user environment file should be either comment
     lines starting with '#', or lines of the form 'name=value'. The
     latter sets the environmental variable 'name' to 'value',
     overriding an existing value.  If 'value' is of the form
     '${foo-bar}', the value is that of the environmental variable
     'foo' if that exists and is set to a non-empty value, otherwise
     'bar'.  This construction can be nested, so 'bar' can be of the
     same form (as in '${foo-${bar-blah}}').

so R_LIBS=${HOME}/etc/R is what should work. Notice that this is
processed by R internally, not by the shell, so syntax may differ from
the command-line equivalent.


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907