[R] equivalent of R CMD BATCH --vanilla for those who can't do anything non-GUI?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 22/05/2014, 5:00 PM, Charles Geyer wrote:
> For a Google Group about aster models, I want to say that people wanting
> help are best advised to provide an example that works as
>
> R CMD BATCH --vanilla foo.R
>
> but I realize that many R users have zero idea of how to start R in any way
> other than clicking on an icon.  Is there a way to start up the standard
> mac and windows GUIs or Rstudio with no loaded saved global environment?
> (Without making it impossible to go back to what they were doing before?)

On Windows, you can copy the shortcut, and edit it to add a --vanilla 
option to the command line.

>
> Is there a way to make the source function do the job (ignore everything in
> the global environment)?

Only in the way Greg said:  start a new R process to run it.

>
> What do you tell users about how to make an example that doesn't assume
> there is huge amounts of crap that the user doesn't even remember what it
> is that is involved?

I just ask for a "minimal, self-contained example".  You won't always 
get that, but I suspect people won't always follow your --vanilla 
instructions, either.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Do I just have to explain the command line to all the GUI fans?
>