A few days ago on R-help I asked about a cross-platform timeout version of readline(). Some suggestions, but only partial joy so far. I can get the Gnu bash 'read -t ...' to work in Windows by using the 'bash -c ' construct, but then R's system() function does not seem to allow this to pass through. Similarly a Perl and Free Pascal routine that I tried, the latter being a single executable that did the prompt and the timeout. (I can send code offline if anyone interested -- not fully protected against bad inputs, however.)
Now I'm wondering where the code for readline is located in the R source. I've tracked as far as the 'do_readln' in names.c, but now want to find the actual code to see if I can patch it, though I am a real novice in C. Suggestions welcome. My application, FYI, is to have a script that will display something, and wait for a keypress (for readline it seems to need the Enter key) but timeout after a preset number of seconds. The setTimeLimit "almost" works -- but not for readline. I'm thinking of a modified readline like readline(prompt='Do you want to continue?', timeout=6). Note that the issue seems to be Windows. I haven't a Mac to try, but Linux can be made to function by various methods at the top. Sigh. JN ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
