[R] Why do tabs disappear when pasted into the R console?

[peter dalgaard]

On Jun 3, 2013, at 15:22 , Sarah Goslee wrote:

> Pasting tabs into the console works for me on linux, which suggests
> that you need to provide more information about your OS and all the
> other usual things.

Which console and which Linux?

Anyways, the thing that usually gets in the way is tab-completion. If you expect pasting to work exactly as if the same characters were typed at the keyboard, you can't really expect that TAB will not try to autocomplete commands and filenames. I don't know whether there's a way to temporarily disable completion.

-pf

> 
> Sarah
> 
> On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Tal Galili <tal.galili at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello Dear R-help Members,
>> 
>> I have noticed that when pasting text with "tab" in it to the R console it
>> eliminates the tab. Whereas, when pasted into the R Editor, the tab is
>> preserved.
>> For example, pasting this:
>> "1997 7680"
>> In the R Console will result in:
>> "19977680"
>> 
>> Is there a way to preserve the tab?
>> This would allow (for example) to use read.table with a table copied from
>> website/libre-office/excel such as:
>> 
>> a = read.table( text=
>> "
>> 1 2
>> 3 4
>> ")
>> a
>> 
>> I understand I can use readClipboard directly, but I wonder if there is a
>> way to use it while the text is kept in the R Editor.
>> 
>> 
>> With regards,
>> Tal
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sarah Goslee
> http://www.functionaldiversity.org
> 
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-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com