[R] tempdir() does not respect TMPDIR

Henrik Bengtsson henr|k@bengt@@on @end|ng |rom gm@||@com
Sun Aug 30 21:45:03 CEST 2020


Sorry, I should retract my claim that it's too late to set TMPDIR in
.Renviron.  It does indeed work on Linux and R 4.0.2, e.g.

$ cd
$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ echo "TMPDIR=$PWD" > ./.Renviron
$ cat ./.Renviron
TMPDIR=/home/hb/test
Rscript --no-init-file -e "tempdir()"
[1] "/home/hb/test/RtmpyH47tc"

Hmm... either this has changed "recently" or I've got it wrong all the
time.  Eitherway, I need to revise the vignette in my 'startup'
package.

Sorry for the misleading comment.

So, back to your comment about it does *not* work, that is,
~/.Renviron is not read, when you double-click on an .RData file.  I
just tried with R 4.0.2 in a Windows 10 VM and I think I can reproduce
what you're describing.

The problem seems to be that when one launches Rgui via
double-clicking .RData, the Rgui will only read ./.Renviron, that is,
the .Renviron file that is located in the same folder as the .RData
file.  It will never load ~/.Renviron (e.g.
C:/Users\alice/Documents/.Renviron) unless the .RData file is in that
folder too.

This looks odd to me but it could be that I made another mistake in my
conclusions above.  I let someone else with a less mushy brain take
over from here.

/Henrik

On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 4:31 PM Jinsong Zhao <jszhao using yeah.net> wrote:
>
> I read the help page, I don't understand it very well, since I set the
> environmental variable TMPDIR in .Renviron. What confused me is when
> double clicking the *.RData to launch R, the tempdir() does not respect
> the environmental variable TMPDIR, but launch R by double clicking Rgui
> icon does.
>
> Best,
> Jinsong
>
> On 2020/8/30 0:36, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> > It is too late to set TMPDIR in .Renviron.  It is one of the
> > environment variables that has to be set prior to launching R.  From
> > help("tempfile", package = "base"):
> >
> > The environment variables TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP are checked in turn and
> > the first found which points to a writable directory is used: if none
> > succeeds ‘/tmp’ is used. The path should not contain spaces. **Note
> > that setting any of these environment variables in the R session has
> > no effect on tempdir(): the per-session temporary directory is created
> > before the interpreter is started.**
> >
> > /Henrik
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 6:40 AM Jinsong Zhao <jszhao using yeah.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi there,
> >>
> >> When I started R by double clicking on Rgui icon (I am on Windows), the
> >> tempdir() returned the tmpdir in the directory I set in .Renviron. If I
> >> started R by double clicking on a *.RData file, the tempdir() return the
> >> tmpdir in the directory setting by Windows system. I don't know whether
> >> it's designed.
> >>
> >>   > sessionInfo()
> >> R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
> >> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
> >> Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 18363)
> >> ...
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Jinsong
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



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