Equivalent to unix "less" command within R console

Question

Is there an equivalent to the unix less command that can be used within the R console?

Answer 1

Not really. There are the commands

• head() and tail() for showing the beginning and end of objects
• print() for explicitly showing an object, and just its name followed by return does the same
• summary() for concise summary that depends on the object
• str() for its structure

and more. An equivalent for less would be a little orthogonal to the language and system. Where the Unix shell offers you less to view the content of a file (which is presumed to be ascii-encoded), it cannot know about all types.

R is different in that it knows about the object types which is why summary() -- as well as the whole modeling framework -- are more appropriate.

Follow-up edit: Another possibility is provided by edit() as well as edit.data.frame().

Answer 2

I save the print output to a file and then read it using an editor or less.

Type the following in R

sink("Routput.txt")
print(varname)
sink()

Then in a shell:

less Routput.txt

Answer 3

If the file is already on disk, then you can use file.show

Answer 4

There is also page() which displays a representation of an object in a pager, like less.

dat <- data.frame(matrix(rnorm(1000), ncol = 10))
page(dat, method = "print")