[R] Setting .Rprofile for RStudio on a Windows 7 x64bit

[John C Frain]

If you have your Rprofile.site file in the default place you will need to
start whatever editor you are using in administrator mode to save your
changes. At least that is so on my PC with windows 10 with R installed in
the default directory. I use notepad++ in administrator mode. I presume
that you could do the same with rstudio.

If you think that answers are short or to the point remember that someone
is giving of his time to help you. I think that you owe someone an apology.

John C Frain
3 Aranleigh Park
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14
Ireland
www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
mailto:frainj at tcd.ie
mailto:frainj at gmail.com

On 15 April 2017 at 23:19, Henrik Bengtsson <henrik.bengtsson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi.
>
> First, there should be no difference in where and how R and RStudio
> locate the R startup file.
>
> Second, if there is an .Rprofile in the working directory (i.e.
> ./.Rprofile), then that file with have higher priority than the file
> located in ~/.Rprofile.  You can use the following R calls, also on
> Windows, to check if you have either of these two files:
>
> > file <- normalizePath("./.Rprofile")
> > file
> > file.exist(file)
>
> > file <- normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")
> > file
> > file.exist(file)
>
> In my case, my working directory is C:/Users/hb/Documents/Projects/, I
> have a ~/.Rprofile file, but not a .Rprofile in the working directory.
> So, I get:
>
> > file <- normalizePath("./.Rprofile")
> > file
> [1] "C:\\Users\\hb\\Documents\\Projects\\.Rprofile"
> > file.exists(file)
> [1] FALSE
>
> > file <- normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")
> > file
> [1] "C:\\Users\\hb\\Documents\\.Rprofile"
> > file.exists(file)
> [1] TRUE
>
> This tells me that my startup file that R tries to load / source
> during startup is "C:\\Users\\hb\\Documents\\.Rprofile" and that's the
> one I should edit.
>
> BTW, the value of normalizePath("~/.Rprofile") and
> file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".Rprofile") should point to the same
> file, expect that normalizePath() makes all backward slashed on
> Windows; the former is just a neater version to use:
>
> > normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")
> [1] "C:\\Users\\hb\\Documents\\.Rprofile"
>
> > file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".Rprofile")
> [1] "C:/Users/hb/Documents/.Rprofile"
>
> > normalizePath(file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".Rprofile"))
> [1] "C:\\Users\\hb\\Documents\\.Rprofile"
>
> (all of the above reference the same file).
>
> So, if file.exists(normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")) gives FALSE, then you
> don't have that file.  If you think you've edited that, then it might
> be that you hit the peculiar Windows property where it hides the
> filename extension from you in the Explorer.  It might be that you
> instead have created / edited the file:
>
> normalizePath("~/.Rprofile.txt")
>
> That often happens when one uses Notepad and saves the file as
> .Rprofile - Notepad simply add a *.txt filename extension unless you
> save it with quotation marks in the Save-As panel.
>
> Now, if you indeed have the file:
>
> normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")
>
> then there is one last annoyance in R that you might have hit.   If you're
> last
> line in that file does not have a newline, the the file will be
> silently ignored by R when R start.  There won't be a warning - not
> even a message.  That is true for all OSes.  It's a "feature" that
> should really be fixed, because I keep seeing it tricking beginners
> and advanced R users all the times.  The easiest way to check if this
> is your problem, use readLines() to read in the content; readLines()
> will give a warning if the last line doesn't have a new line, e.g.
>
> > readLines(normalizePath("~/.Rprofile"))
> [1] "options(prompt=\"R> \")" "set.seed(12345)"
> Warning message:
> In readLines(normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")) :
>   incomplete final line found on 'C:\Users\hb\Documents\.Rprofile'
>
> If you don't see the warning message, you should be fine.
>
> Finally, an easy way to setup a ~/.Rprofile startup file is to do it
> from within R, e.g.
>
> > cat('options(prompt="R> ")\n', file = "~/.Rprofile")
> > cat('set.seed(12345)\n', file = "~/.Rprofile", append = TRUE)
>
> The '\n' at the end of each string represents a newline character, so
> make sure you don't forget those.
>
> Hope this help
>
> Henrik
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 1:10 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >> On Apr 15, 2017, at 12:46 PM, Boris Steipe <boris.steipe at utoronto.ca>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> As with R, do with RStudio: Read The Beautiful Manual, and peruse The
> Google. For example, searching Google with the two (admittedly hard to
> guess) cryptograms:
> >>  "RStudio Rprofile"
> >>
> >> will present more than a dozen most enlightening links to fulfil your
> desire.
> >>
> >> Perhaps the following link works better for you though:
> >>  https://www.bing.com/search?q=rstudio+rprofile
> >
> > Another promising search strategy would be SO with "[rstudio]" in the
> tags:
> >
> > http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Brstudio%5D+rprofile+windows
> >
> > --
> > david.
> >>
> >> B.
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Apr 15, 2017, at 3:14 PM, BR_email <br at dmstat1.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Bill:
> >>> Thanks for reply.
> >>> Sorry, I do not understand it.
> >>> For example, where do I put "file.path(getwd(), ".Rprofile")" ?
> >>>
> >>> Bruce
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> William Dunlap wrote:
> >>>> I think the site-specific R profile should be, using R syntax
> >>>>   file.path(R.home("etc"), "Rprofile.site") # no dot before the
> capital R
> >>>> The personal R profile will be
> >>>>   file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".Rprofile") # there is a dot before
> capital R
> >>>> but if a local R profile,
> >>>>   file.path(getwd(), ".Rprofile") # there is a dot before capital R
> >>>> exists it will be used and the one in HOME will not be.  (getwd()
> should
> >>>> be the startup directory.)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Bill Dunlap
> >>>> TIBCO Software
> >>>> wdunlap tibco.com
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 9:06 AM, BR_email <br at dmstat1.com> wrote:
> >>>>> Hi R-helpers:
> >>>>> Can you offer assistance in my getting .Rprofile and .Rprofile.site
> to run
> >>>>> in RStudio?
> >>>>> When I start RStudio nothing happens.
> >>>>> I have put .Rprofile in [1] and [2], and .Rprofile.site in [2].
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Below, the info I believe you need to know.
> >>>>> Thanks, in advance, for any help.
> >>>>> Bruce
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The .Rprofile and .Rprofile.site are R-type files, which contain the
> two
> >>>>> lines below.
> >>>>> Also, I tried the profile files as text files.
> >>>>> options(prompt="R> ")
> >>>>> set.seed(12345)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Sys.getenv("HOME") [1] "C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents"
> >>>>>> Sys.getenv("R_HOME") [2] "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-33~1.3"
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ______________________________________________
> >>>>> R-help at 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 at 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 at 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.
> >
> > David Winsemius
> > Alameda, CA, USA
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at 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 at 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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