[R] Environment variable defined in .bashrc is not recognized by R

Luca Cerone luca.cerone at gmail.com
Tue Apr 1 11:33:09 CEST 2014


Thanks,
effectively I was using RStudio (on an Ubuntu 12.04 machine).

Is there any other way to make the variable available to Rstudio?
Now I have simply written the path manually, but I like the idea of
having a system-wide variable :)

Thanks for your help, Rainer!


On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Rainer M Krug <Rainer at krugs.de> wrote:
> Luca Cerone <luca.cerone at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Dear all,
>> in my .bashrc file I have set the environment variable R_HISTFILE like this:
>>
>>  export R_HISTFILE="$HOME/.Rhistory"
>>
>> I then use it in my .Rprofile to have R writing all the history in a
>> single file, rather than on a per directory basis.
>> However this doesn't work becaus R_HISTFILE is not recognized by R.
>
> Which OS? How do you start R?
>
> There is a difference between login shell (executed when you log in) and
> non-log in (I thik interactive shell? don't know the actual
> name). .baschrc is only executed after you are logged in and start the
> shell. So when you start R from the shell, it should work - you can
> check by
>
>   echo $R_HISTFILE
>
> which should show you the value of the variable.
>
> If you are starting R the R gui (on Mac or RStudio) .bashrc is not
> sourced. Checo online for the file which will be sourced by the login
> shell - different between OS and distros.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rainer
>
>
>>
>> If I type: Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE")
>> the output is: ""
>>
>> How can I get R recognizing environment variables?
>>
>> Best,
>> Luca
>
> --
> Rainer M. Krug
> email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
> PGP: 0x0F52F982



-- 
Luca Cerone

Tel: +34 692 06 71 28
Skype: luca.cerone




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