CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rrstudio
Gilles San Martin
Gilles San Martin

Reputation: 4370

RStudio does not execute `system` commands from Rprofile.site

Using Rstudio (Version 1.0.143) under Ubuntu (16.04), if I add system("echo 'Hello world'") to my /usr/lib/R/etc/Rprofile.site file, I have no Hello world message displayed in R studio at startup.
If I start R from the terminal I have the Hello world message.

It seems that R studio ignores the system commands from Rprofile.site (idem from the .Rprofile file in the home directory)

Is it possible to enable system commands executions or is there a good reason to avoid this behavior ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 667

Answers (1)

Zhuoer Dong
Zhuoer Dong

Reputation: 639

For short, RStudio doesn't source Rprofile.site file at all. (I use Ubuntu 17.04 and compile R-3.4.1 myself)

test Rprofile.site

To simply the question, you can use x=1 rather system("echo 'Hello world'") in the Rprofile.site file. Then you open RStudio:

> x
Error: object 'x' not found

That tells you whether RStudio ignores the system() commands in Rprofile.site or R studio ignores the entire Rprofile.site file.

test system()

If you find that your RStudio source theRprofile.site file instead. You can try system("echo haha > x") or system2('echo', 'haha', stdout = T) -> x.

That tells you whether RStudio ignores the system() commands or you can't see the message due to other reasons.

what RStudio says

Finally, see https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/200643758-Rprofile-site-

We don't actually implement the code for sourcing Rprofile.site (R does)

by Ian Pylvainen, Support Engineer at RStudio, Inc.

Upvotes: 2

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