[R] Best R text editors?

Karl Ove Hufthammer Karl.Hufthammer at math.uib.no
Wed Sep 2 09:38:48 CEST 2009


Jonathan Greenberg:

> Quick informal poll: what is everyone's favorite text editor for working
> with R?  I'd like to hear from people who are using editors that have
> some level of direct R interface (e.g. Tinn-R, Komodo+SciViews).  Thanks!

I use RKward. It’s a KDE app, based on the same editor component as KWrite 
and Kate (same syntax highlighting, keyboard shortcuts, &c.).

While it does have menus for plots, tests and other analyses, I only use it 
as a text editor, with one pane containing the R code (script), and one pane 
containing the R output. I then use keyboard shortcuts to ‘Run current 
line’, ‘Run current selection’ and ’Run all’. Commenting out (blocks of) 
lines is easy using the Kate keyboard shortcut, ‘Ctrl + D‘.

One feature I rather like is the auto completion. If I start typing ‘rn’, a 
non-obtrusive pop-up suggests ‘rnorm’ and ’rnbinom’. If I type ‘rnorm’, all 
the arguments and default values of the ‘rnorm’ function is displayed in the 
pop-up.

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer




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