[R] [newbie] scripting remote check for R package

[Tom Roche]

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2012-September/322985.html
>> e.g., how to replace '<query R for package=package_name>' in the
>> following:

>> for RSERVER in 'foo' 'bar' 'baz' ; do
>>   ssh ${RSERVER} '<query R for package=package_name>'
>> done

>> or is there a better way to script checking for an R package?

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2012-September/323000.html
> I would call something like this via ssh [...]

> Rscript -e 'as.numeric(suppressWarnings(suppressPackageStartupMessages(require(ggplot2))))'

Thanks! but ...

While that works great on _my_ linux boxes (on which I installed R),
on the cluster where I need to run this (where I do *not* have root)

me at foo:~ $ which Rscript
> /usr/bin/which: no Rscript in (/home/me/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin)
me at foo:~ $ find /share -name 'Rscript' | wc -l
> 0
me at foo:~ $ which R
> alias R='/share/linux86_64/bin/R'
>         /share/linux86_64/bin/R

So I'm wondering:

1 Is there a way to do `Rscript -e` with plain, commandline R?

2 What should my admin have done to install both Rscript and R?
  (Alternatively, what should I tell my admin to do in order to make
  both Rscript and R available?)

3 Is there any reason to install R without Rscript? (Alternatively,
  when I ask my admin to install Rscript, is there any objection
  I should anticipate?)

thanks again, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>