Expert R users, what's in your .Rprofile?...

Question

This question is maybe a little too cute, but I have always found startup profile files of other people both useful and instructive about the language. Moreover, while I have some customization for bash and vim, I have nothing for R. For example, one thing I always wanted is different colors for input and output text in a window terminal, and maybe even syntax highlighting.

Answer 1

Here is mine. It won't help you with the coloring but I get that from ESS and Emacs...

options("width"=160)                # wide display with multiple monitors
options("digits.secs"=3)            # show sub-second time stamps

r <- getOption("repos")             # hard code the US repo for CRAN
r["CRAN"] <- "http://cran.us.r-project.org"
options(repos = r)
rm(r)

## put something this is your .Rprofile to customize the defaults
setHook(packageEvent("grDevices", "onLoad"),
        function(...) grDevices::X11.options(width=8, height=8, 
                                             xpos=0, pointsize=10, 
                                             #type="nbcairo"))  # Cairo device
                                             #type="cairo"))    # other Cairo dev
                                             type="xlib"))      # old default

## from the AER book by Zeileis and Kleiber
options(prompt="R> ", digits=4, show.signif.stars=FALSE)


options("pdfviewer"="kpdf")         # on Linux, use kpdf as the pdf viewer

Answer 2

Most of my personal functions and loaded libraries are in the Rfunctions.r script

source("c:\\data\\rprojects\\functions\\Rfunctions.r")


.First <- function(){
   cat("\n Rrrr! The statistics program for Pirates !\n\n")

  }

  .Last <- function(){
   cat("\n Rrrr! Avast Ye, YO HO!\n\n")

  }


#===============================================================
# Tinn-R: necessary packages
#===============================================================
library(utils)
necessary = c('svIDE', 'svIO', 'svSocket', 'R2HTML')
if(!all(necessary %in% installed.packages()[, 'Package']))
  install.packages(c('SciViews', 'R2HTML'), dep = T)

options(IDE = 'C:/Tinn-R/bin/Tinn-R.exe')
options(use.DDE = T)

library(svIDE)
library(svIO)
library(svSocket)
library(R2HTML)
guiDDEInstall()
shell(paste("mkdir C:\\data\\rplots\\plottemp", gsub('-','',Sys.Date()), sep=""))
pldir <- paste("C:\\data\\rplots\\plottemp", gsub('-','',Sys.Date()), sep="")

plot.str <-c('savePlot(paste(pldir,script,"\\BeachSurveyFreq.pdf",sep=""),type="pdf")')

Answer 3

Here's mine. I always use the main cran repository, and have code to make it easy to source in-development package code.

.First <- function() {
    library(graphics)
    options("repos" = c(CRAN = "http://cran.r-project.org/"))
    options("device" = "quartz")
}

packages <- list(
  "describedisplay" = "~/ggobi/describedisplay",
  "linval" = "~/ggobi/linval", 

  "ggplot2" =  "~/documents/ggplot/ggplot",
  "qtpaint" =  "~/documents/cranvas/qtpaint", 
  "tourr" =    "~/documents/tour/tourr", 
  "tourrgui" = "~/documents/tour/tourr-gui", 
  "prodplot" = "~/documents/categorical-grammar"
)

l <- function(pkg) {
  pkg <- tolower(deparse(substitute(pkg)))
  if (is.null(packages[[pkg]])) {
    path <- file.path("~/documents", pkg, pkg)
  } else {
    path <- packages[pkg]
  }

  source(file.path(path, "load.r"))  
}

test <- function(path) {
  path <- deparse(substitute(path))
  source(file.path("~/documents", path, path, "test.r"))  
}

Answer 4

Mine is not too fancy:

# So the mac gui can find latex
Sys.setenv("PATH" = paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"),"/usr/texbin",sep=":"))

#Use last(x) instead of x[length(x)], works on matrices too
last <- function(x) { tail(x, n = 1) }

#For tikzDevice caching 
options( tikzMetricsDictionary='/Users/cameron/.tikzMetricsDictionary' )

Answer 5

I set my lattice color theme in my profile. Here are two other tweaks I use:

# Display working directory in the titlebar
# Note: This causes demo(graphics) to fail
utils::setWindowTitle(base::getwd())
utils::assignInNamespace("setwd",function(dir)   {.Internal(setwd(dir));setWindowTitle(base::getwd())},"base")

# Don't print more than 1000 lines
options(max.print=2000)

Answer 6

Here's mine.

The goquartz() stuff is for running on Mac OSX from the terminal -- it gives a quartz display (like you get when using the GUI) instead of X11.

options(showWarnCalls=T, showErrorCalls=T)
options(repos=c("http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu","http://cran.stat.ucla.edu"))

goquartz = function() {
  library("CarbonEL")
  options(device='quartz')
  Sys.unsetenv("DISPLAY")
}

if (.Platform$GUI == "X11") {
  goquartz()
}

Answer 7

I like saving my R command history and having it available each time I run R:

In the shell or .bashrc:

export R_HISTFILE=~/.Rhistory

in .Rprofile:

.Last <- function() {
        if (!any(commandArgs()=='--no-readline') && interactive()){
                require(utils)
                try(savehistory(Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE")))
        }
}

Answer 8

options(stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

Although I don't actually have that in my .Rprofile, because it might breaks my coauthors' code, I wish it was the default. Why?

1) Character vectors use less memory (but only barely);

2) More importantly, we would avoid problems such as:

> x <- factor(c("a","b","c"))
> x
[1] a b c
Levels: a b c
> x <- c(x, "d")
> x
[1] "1" "2" "3" "d"

and

> x <- factor(c("a","b","c"))
> x[1:2] <- c("c", "d")
Warning message:
In `[<-.factor`(`*tmp*`, 1:2, value = c("c", "d")) :
  invalid factor level, NAs generated

Factors are great when you need them (e.g. implementing ordering in graphs) but a nuisance most of the time.

Answer 9

Thanks for the interesting post! Here is mine. (I stole some of the above snippets and incorporated them into my .Rprofile). Thank you everyone for contributing.

.First <- function () {
  options(device="quartz")
}

.Last <- function () {
  if (!any(commandArgs() == '--no-readline') && interactive()) {
    require(utils)
    try(savehistory(Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE")))
  }
}

# Slightly more flexible than as.Date
# my.as.Date("2009-01-01") == my.as.Date(2009, 1, 1) == as.Date("2009-01-01")
my.as.Date <- function (a, b=NULL, c=NULL, ...) {
  if (class(a) != "character")
    return (as.Date(sprintf("%d-%02d-%02d", a, b, c)))
  else
    return (as.Date(a))
}

# Some useful aliases
cd <- setwd
pwd <- getwd
lss <- dir
asd <- my.as.Date # examples: asd("2009-01-01") == asd(2009, 1, 1) == as.Date("2009-01-01")
last <- function (x, n=1, ...) tail(x, n=n, ...)

# Set proxy for all web requests
Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://192.168.0.200:80/")

# Search RPATH for file <fn>.  If found, return full path to it
search.path <- function(fn, 
     paths = strsplit(chartr("\\", "/", Sys.getenv("RPATH")), split = 
                switch(.Platform$OS.type, windows = ";", ":"))[[1]]) { 
  for(d in paths) 
     if (file.exists(f <- file.path(d, fn))) 
        return(f) 
  return(NULL) 
} 

# If loading in an environment that doesn't respect my RPATH environment
# variable, set it here
if (Sys.getenv("RPATH") == "") {
  Sys.setenv(RPATH=file.path(path.expand("~"), "Library", "R", "source"))
}

# Load commonly used functions
if (interactive())
  source(search.path("afazio.r"))

# If no R_HISTFILE environment variable, set default
if (Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE") == "") {
  Sys.setenv(R_HISTFILE=file.path("~", ".Rhistory"))
}

# Override q() to not save by default.
# Same as saying q("no")
q <- function (save="no", ...) {
  quit(save=save, ...)
}

# ---------- My Environments ----------
#
# Rather than starting R from within different directories, I prefer to
# switch my "environment" easily with these functions.  An "environment" is
# simply a directory that contains analysis of a particular topic.
# Example usage:
# > load.env("markets")  # Load US equity markets analysis environment
# > # ... edit some .r files in my environment
# > reload()             # Re-source .r/.R files in my environment
#
# On next startup of R, I will automatically be placed into the last
# environment I entered

# My current environment
.curr.env = NULL

# File contains name of the last environment I entered
.last.env.file = file.path(path.expand("~"), ".Rlastenv")

# Parent directory where all of my "environment"s are contained
.parent.env.dir = file.path(path.expand("~"), "Analysis")

# Create parent directory if it doesn't already exist
if (!file.exists(.parent.env.dir))
  dir.create(.parent.env.dir)

load.env <- function (string, save=TRUE) {
  # Load all .r/.R files in <.parent.env.dir>/<string>/
  cd(file.path(.parent.env.dir, string))
  for (file in lss()) {
    if (substr(file, nchar(file)-1, nchar(file)+1) %in% c(".r", ".R"))
      source(file)
  }
  .curr.env <<- string
  # Save current environment name to file
  if (save == TRUE) writeLines(.curr.env, .last.env.file)
  # Let user know environment switch was successful
  print (paste(" -- in ", string, " environment -- ")) 
}

# "reload" current environment.
reload <- resource <- function () {
  if (!is.null(.curr.env))
    load.env(.curr.env, save=FALSE)
  else
    print (" -- not in environment -- ")
}

# On startup, go straight to the environment I was last working in
if (interactive() && file.exists(.last.env.file)) {
  load.env(readLines(.last.env.file))
}

Answer 10

I hate to type the full words 'head', 'summary', 'names' every time, so I use some aliases.

You can put aliases like this into your .Rprofile file, but you have to put the full path to the function (e.g. utils::head) or otherwise it won't work.

# aliases
s <- base::summary;
h <- utils::head;
n <- base::names;

Answer 11

I've got this, more dynamic trick to use full terminal width, whick tries to read from the COLUMNS environment variable (on Linux):

tryCatch(
  {options(
      width = as.integer(Sys.getenv("COLUMNS")))},
  error = function(err) {
    write("Can't get your terminal width. Put ``export COLUMNS'' in your \
           .bashrc. Or something. Setting width to 120 chars",
           stderr());
    options(width=120)}
)

This way R will use the full width even as you resize your terminal window.

Answer 12

I have an environment variable R_USER_WORKSPACE which points to the top directory of my packages. In .Rprofile I define a function devlib which sets the working directory (so that data() works) and sources all .R files in the R subdirectory. It is quite similar to Hadley's l() function above.

devlib <- function(pkg) {
  setwd(file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER_WORKSPACE", "."), deparse(substitute(pkg)), "dev"))
  sapply(list.files("R", pattern=".r$", ignore.case=TRUE, full.names=TRUE), source)
  invisible(NULL)
}

.First <- function() {
  setwd(Sys.getenv("R_USER_WORKSPACE", "."))
  options("repos" = c(CRAN = "http://mirrors.softliste.de/cran/", CRANextra="http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"))
}

.Last <- function() update.packages(ask="graphics")

Answer 13

best thread EVER!

Answer 14

setwd("C://path//to//my//prefered//working//directory")
library("ggplot2")
library("RMySQL")
library("foreign")
answer <- readline("What database would you like to connect to? ")
con <- dbConnect(MySQL(),user="root",password="mypass", dbname=answer)

I do a lot of work from mysql databases, so connecting right away is a godsend. I only wish there was a way of listing the avaialble databases so I wouldn't have to remember all the different names.