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

Question

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"="okular")         # on Linux, use okular as the pdf viewer

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.

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

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

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

EDIT: to answer your question, you can use the colorout package to have different colors in the terminal. Cool! :-)

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")))
        }
}

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"))  
}

Here are two functions I find handy for working with windows.

The first converts the \s to /.

.repath <- function() {
   cat('Paste windows file path and hit RETURN twice')
   x <- scan(what = "")
   xa <- gsub('\\\\', '/', x)
   writeClipboard(paste(xa, collapse=" "))
   cat('Here\'s your de-windowsified path. (It\'s also on the clipboard.)\n', xa, '\n')
 }

The second opens the working directory in a new explorer window.

getw <- function() {
    suppressWarnings(shell(paste("explorer",  gsub('/', '\\\\', getwd()))))
}

I've got this, more dynamic trick to use full terminal width, which 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.