[R] [semi-OT] Using fortune() in an email signature

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 1 September 2010 at 15:49, Stuart Luppescu wrote:
| Hello, As you can see from my signature in this message, I use the R
| fortune function to generate a fortune, which is then fed to the
| signature program, which constructs a named pipe containing the
| fortune-bearing sig, which is then included in mail messages. The
| problem is that it's got extraneous junk in it and I can't figure out
| how to get rid of it. This is the command that generates the fortune:
| 
| /usr/bin/R --no-save --no-restore -q < /home/sl70/print-fortune.R
| (where print-fortune.R is just
| library(fortunes)
| fortune()
| )
| 
| This produces this:
| > library(fortunes)                                                             
| > fortune()
| 
| Michael Watson: Hopefully this one isn't in the manual or I am about to get shot :-S
| Peter Dalgaard: *Kapow*...
|    -- Michael Watson and Peter Dalgaard (question on axis())
|       R-help (February 2006)
| 
| > 
| 
| I would like to remove the first two lines and the last line, so I
| changed the command to this:
| /usr/bin/R --no-save --no-restore < /home/sl70/print-fortune.R  |tail \
| -n  +23  | head -n -2 2> /dev/null
| 
| That give the desired result when I run it at the command line, but when
| I feed it to the signature program, I get this message:

There are scripting front-ends to R for these tasks. A few years ago Jeff and
I released 'r' (aka littler), R Core followed up with Rscript a few months
later.  I still use r more.

In r / littler, all calls to library() are wrapped in suppressMessages()
because I too hate that echo from library loads.  So here is what you could do:


edd at max:~$ r --package=fortunes --eval="print(fortune())"

Ah, so that's why my report of a bug in the RCheapViagra package didn't get through....
   -- Barry Rowlingson (after Peter Dalgaard announced a new spam filter for R-bugs)
      R-devel (January 2004)

edd at max:~$ r --package=fortunes --eval="print(fortune())"

I use R. My company benefits from it. My clients benefit from it.
...and I sleep just fine (when I do sleep)... :-)
   -- Marc Schwartz, Medanalytics (about the 'costs' of free software)
      R-help (June 2004)

edd at max:~$ r -lfortunes -e"print(fortune())"    # shorter form

Soon, they'll be speaking R on the subway.
   -- Michael Rennie (giving 'Kudos to the R support team')
      R-help (July 2004)

edd at max:~$ 


Doing the same with Rscript is left as an exercise....

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com