On 19/09/2009 10:12 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
One solution would be to have a portable version of the
Windows
Edit | Paste commands only
functionality that works on all platforms.
For example if a command such as this were available:
source.commands <- function(echo = TRUE, ...) {
L <- readLines("clipboard")
L <- grep("^[>+] ", L, value = TRUE)
L <- gsub("^..", "", L)
source(textConnection(L), echo = echo, ...)
}
one could just copy the email snippet and the issue this command in
the R session:
source.commands()
Building this directly into source as an option might be nice.
The Windows Rgui is uses slightly more general patterns than those so it
can take output from running examples, e.g.
> example(mean)
mean> x <- c(0:10, 50)
mean> xm <- mean(x)
m
[1] 8.75 5.50
mean> mean(USArrests, trim = 0.2)
Murder Assault UrbanPop Rape
7.42 167.60 66.20 20.16
(and does it in C code, not using grep/gsub; see CleanTranscript in
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/gnuwin32/console.c), but that's
basically what it does.
However, it's hard to do this in a portable way, because not all systems
support "clipboard" as the name of the clipboard for cut and paste. I
think Unix/Linux systems need to be running X11, and OSX systems don't
normally support it in the GUI. So it might makes sense to have a
portable version of the CleanTranscript function available, but it's
really up to each different system to connect it up to cut and paste.
Here's a quick version of CleanTranscript, translated to R:
CleanTranscript <- function(lines) {
lines <- grep("^[[:blank:]]*[^>+[:blank:]]*[>+]", lines, value = TRUE)
lines <- sub("^[[:blank:]]*[^>+[:blank:]]*[>+] ?", "", lines)
}
So on systems where "clipboard" is supported, executing
source(textConnection(CleanTranscript(readLines("clipboard"))),
echo = TRUE, max.deparse.length=Inf)
will do something similar to what the Windows "Paste commands only" menu
option does, but you'd need a different incantation on other systems.
And even this will sometimes mess up, e.g. it will sometimes
misinterpret output that contains > or + as input.
Duncan Murdoch
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Ted Harding
<ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
On 19-Sep-09 08:48:45, johannes rara wrote:
The R help mailing list posting guide
http://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html
suggests to give an example in this form
...snip...
f I have a matrix x as follows:
> x <- matrix(1:8, nrow=4, ncol=2,
dimnames=list(c("A","B","C","D"), c("x","y"))
> x
x y
A 1 5
B 2 6
C 3 7
D 4 8
>
...snip...
Would it be reasonable to consider changing this guide about this
matter?
Yes, I think there is a case for a change. I must have read the
above myself, once, but ignored it later for the reasons I gave
below. In any case, that citation is not in the context of advice
about "how to format R code when posting" (there is no such advice
explicitly given in the posting-guide), but in the context that it
can be helpful to provide an example:
"Examples: Sometimes it helps to provide a small example that
someone can actually run. For example:"
(then the example above). Possibly, people may tend to read that
example as if it were advice on formatting the code.
So maybe the change which could be helpful in the present context
would be to follow the above example with a section which advised
on how to format the code for examples which "someone can actually
run" (they cannot "actually run" the code as given in the example).
In other words, on the lines of
When posting R code for examples, when this is copied from an R
console remove any command prompts ">" and continuation prompts
"+" from the code as it appears on the R console, and precede
each line of R output, messages, etc., with "#" (to make it a
"comment", so that if the code is copy-pasted from R-help into an
R console it will work as-is without the need for further editing.
Example:
[...]
What do other people (in particular the maintainers of the posting
guide) think?
Some might argue that the ">" and "+" prompts serve to mark the
presence of R code and distinguish it from message text. But then
the result is something that nobody "can actually run". I think,
myself, that (especially with indenting of the code by a couple
of spaces) the format I describe is clearly enough distinguished.
Ted.
2009/9/19 Ted Harding <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk>:
On 19-Sep-09 08:00:18, Cedrick W. Johnson wrote:
At least in windows, if you right click directly in the r console,
there's a command for 'Paste commands only' which may be one
solution...
Not sure about other platforms..
hth
c
It was precisely for this kind of reason that, when including
R code in postings to the list, I took to formatting it in the
following kind of way:
_a <- 1:10
_a
_# [1] _1 _2 _3 _4 _5 _6 _7 _8 _9 10
_a[1:5]
_# [1] 1 2 3 4 5
In this way, any R commands copy-pasted into R will work as-is,
anything else is a comment and will not interfere. I notice that
some other people also post their code in this way.
I recommend it to all! If the code has been copy-pasted into the
email from an R console, then of course the ">" prompts will be
there. But then I just edit these out of the email. A bit more
trouble for me, but a lot less trouble for others.
For instance, if someone had posted the above as copied from the
R console in its original form
a <- 1:10
a
_[1] _1 _2 _3 _4 _5 _6 _7 _8 _9 10
a[1:5]
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
and I wanted to try it out, then I would either have to re-open the
email in "edit" mode so as to edit the email itself, or else
copy-paste
the above into a text-edit window[*] and pre-edit it there before
copying into R.
[*] I would be using 'vim' in a Linux xterm. Removal of the "> "
prompts (or "+ " continuation prompts) from a long series of commands
is relatively easy: Just higlight a column-block of the first two
columns, then press "d" to delete them. But you would first need to
enter " _# " for other stuff by hand.
Best wishes to all,
Ted.
johannes rara wrote:
Hi,
How do you people avoid copy-pasting and manual editing of the code
posted in this list? I mean that if some one post a solution for an
answer like this:
a <- 1:10
a
_[1] _1 _2 _3 _4 _5 _6 _7 _8 _9 10
a[1:5]
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
I have to copy-paste it to e.g. Tinn-R and remove "> " part of the
line to try it in my R. When you keep doing this it gets quite
annoying. How do you people avoid this (search and replace,
perhaps?).
The best way would be to able to send this straight from your e-mail
reader into R (e.g. from gmail).
-Johannes
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Date: 19-Sep-09 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Time: 09:33:48
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PLEASE do read the posting guide
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
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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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Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 19-Sep-09 Time: 10:46:00
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
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@r-project.org mailing list
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@r-project.org mailing list
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.
