R user interfaces

R’s default user interface

Command prompt

For interactive data analysis: type in commands, hit Return key and get text output as a result.

1+7

[1] 8

Comments start with #, they are not executed as a command

9 * 3     # this is a comment

[1] 27

Copy and paste to and from the clipboard as usual (Windows: Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v)
Interrupt R with ESC (on Windows) or Ctrl+c (Linux)
Quit with q()
Save a protocol of your commands and the output with sink("fileName.txt", split=TRUE)

For batch mode:

Rscript.exe input.r

Rterm.exe --no-restore --no-save < input.r > output.txt

getOption("width")

[1] 75

Change option, save previous value, and restore previous value

op <- options(width=70)
options(op)

Also see help(Startup) for files controlling the startup options.

Compared to the standard user interface that is already included with R, there are several better alternative options.

RStudio integrated development environment: Cross platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux), great support for the workflow for these posts, my preferred choice
Eclipse integrated development environment with StatET plugin: Cross platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux), powerful, visual debugging support, somewhat complicated to set up (installation instructions), somewhat sluggish on older computers
Architect by OpenAnalytics: Combines Eclipse and StatET into a pre-configured bundle that removes the complicated Eclipse configuration
TinnR text editor with good support for communicating with R: Windows only
Emacs / XEmacs text editor with Emacs Speaks Statistics add-on: Cross platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux), very powerful, somewhat hard to learn