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

Wed Apr 19 21:57:42 CEST 2017

Henrik:
Your points are well taken.
My biggest mistake was that I thought my question was an easy one.
But as you rightly stated, I did not explicitly provide my background.
I assumed my question implied how much I did not know, beyond being new 
to R.
It's like Einstein teaching arithmetic, he would know his audience and 
teach accordingly.

It was tough on me (mentally draining) because I want to learn R
and just couldn't break through until I believe either you or Peter 
picked up on my using notepad.

Well, I am glad you guys really want to help and must as I needed it.

Regards,
Bruce

Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> I'd be really surprised if basically not all text editors could be
> used here; it more that some have quirks making it less obvious.  For
> instance, with plain old Notepad that comes with all Windows distros
> you can put (double) quotes around the file name in the Save As...
> dialog to prevent Notepad from adding it's own default *.txt extension
> (when the extension is missing).  BTW, since you're using RStudio, you
> can also use that to create your .Rprofile file; RStudio's Save As...
> does not mess with the filename - it saves the file as you specify.
>
> Bruce, what I think would have helped helping you here early on is if
> you had given a bit more details on what you did / tried.  There was a
> lot of "does not work" early on, which gives little clues.  It wasn't
> clear where you saved the files.  Maybe you weren't sure yourself, but
> even knowing so would have helped help you.  It was also not clear how
> much experience you had with R, which caused confusion - knowing "new
> to R, with non professional programming skills" would probably have
> cut some corners.  As a helper, here and on other forums, it's often
> hard to guess this and to provide a proper reply is then hard - like
> trying to give a scientific presentation when you don't know who's in
> the audience.  This happens all the time and most people quickly picks
> up what the expectations are and then get a smoother ride going
> forward.
>
> /Henrik
>
> PS. With the risk of adding confusion, unless you already do so, you
> should focus on only using/editing your
> C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile (also referred to as
> ~/.Rprofile) file.  That one does not require any Administrative
> rights to edit and has the advantage of working also when you update R
> later.   The C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-33~1.3/etc/.Rprofile.site file requires
> Admin to edit and will have to be recreated/reedited whenever you
> update R (e.g. R 3.4.0 will install in a different directory).  A
> regular R user should never have to edit the latter.  It's mostly used
> for system admins who wish to set common startup settings for multiple
> users in a location file.  The *.site part of .Rprofile.site suggests
> site-wide settings.  So, use ~/.Rprofile to control your R startup
> settings.
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 8:26 AM, Bruce Ratner PhD <br at dmstat1.com> wrote:
>> Dear John:
>> My pleasure to respond to your request.
>> Problem: Cannot get the .Rprofile file to take affect in either R (or RStudio).
>> As to "what" can be in put into a  .Rprofile file is abound, many examples in the manuals, blogs, links, and books.
>>
>> The "how to" write the file was the real issue, not clearly covered in any material I could find or purchase.
>>
>> I read that any notepad-type app can be used to create the .Rprofile file:
>> 1. with or without a txt/R extension, and/or
>> 2. with or without Administrator permission.
>>
>> Not being a professional programmer/developer, I did not know about text editors that can create files with no extension, which was the problem at hand.
>>
>> After many back and forth drilling down by R-helpers with trouble shooting queries, it became clear that I was not using a developer's text editor.
>>
>> Solution: I found an editor online, EditPad Pro 7 (for Windows), with which I created my .Rprofile file.
>>
>> The result was complete success, and gratitude to all R-helpers who stuck by me,
>> understanding I am new to R, with non professional programming skills. As a statistician (or if you prefer data scientist) for twenty plus years, clearly I must know how to program, but not at the pro level or pro understanding.
>>
>> John, I hope this write up is satisfactory, if not please let let me know, as I will rewrite until you are happy with it.
>>
>> It is a nice surprise to hear your wanting to archive the problem-solution, which almost did me in, and which created ill feelings among several R-helpers towards me.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Bruce
>>
>> ______________
>> Bruce Ratner PhD
>> The Significant Statistician™
>> (516) 791-3544
>> Statistical Predictive Analytics -- www.DMSTAT1.com
>> Machine-Learning Data Mining -- www.GenIQ.net
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Apr 18, 2017, at 9:52 AM, Sparks, John James <jspark4 at uic.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bruce,
>>>
>>> Do you think that you could post the final solution to the problem?  That
>>> way it would be stored with this thread and the next person who has the
>>> same problem would be able to locate the FINAL solution.
>>>
>>> --JJS
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Mon, April 17, 2017 12:47 pm, BR_email wrote:
>>>> TO _ALL_:
>>>> THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
>>>> After hours, and hours, and hours, and ... , and hours: Success.
>>>> To all who helped, thanks.
>>>> My quest was minor, but major for me, as I learn from the path of one,
>>>> whether big or small begets another.
>>>>
>>>> I never look down at anyone, except to help him/her up.
>>>>
>>>> With gratitude,
>>>> Bruce
>>>>
>>>> Bruce Ratner, Ph.D.
>>>> The Significant Statistician™
>>>> (516) 791-3544
>>>> Statistical Predictive Analtyics -- www.DMSTAT1.com
>>>> Machine-Learning Data Mining and Modeling -- www.GenIQ.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>>>>>> On 17 Apr 2017, at 19:01 , BR_email <br at dmstat1.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Berend: Something looks good, but RStudio still Rprofile still doees
>>>>>> not affect the launch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> source(echo=TRUE, "C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile.site")
>>>>>>> options(prompt="R> ")
>>>>>>> set.seed(12345)
>>>>>>> rm(list=ls())
>>>>>> R>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bruce Ratner, Ph.D.
>>>>>> The Significant Statistician™
>>>>>> (516) 791-3544
>>>>>> Statistical Predictive Analtyics -- www.DMSTAT1.com
>>>>>> Machine-Learning Data Mining and Modeling -- www.GenIQ.net
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Berend Hasselman wrote:
>>>>>>> source(echo=TRUE, ""C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile.site")
>>>>> According to the gospel of St.Henrik, that filename is wrong, and
>>>>> possibly the directory too.
>>>>>
>>>>> So try his suggestions. What is the output (show us!) of
>>>>>
>>>>> normalizePath("./.Rprofile")
>>>>> normalizePath("~/.Rprofile")
>>>>>
>>>>> Assuming that the former is
>>>>>
>>>>> "C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile"
>>>>>
>>>>> you could try renaming the .Rprofile.site file to that. If need be, use
>>>>> file.rename, as in
>>>>>
>>>>> file.rename(from="C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile.site",
>>>>> to="C:/Users/BruceRatner/Documents/.Rprofile")
>>>>>
>>>>> (and restart, obviously).
>>>>>
>>>>> [I wouldn't set the seed in a .Rprofile file, nor would I use rm()
>>>>> there, but that is a different kettle of fish.]
>>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> 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.
>
>