.Rhistory file not loaded at startup

Question

Here is how I start R on my linux machine.

.Rprofile is at the root of my $HOME directory and has only this line:

source ("~/.config/r/Renviron.r")

Then I append all kind of options,user environment variable paths,functions or aliases in my Renviron.r file. Among other lines, this one set the path to Rhistory :

Sys.setenv(R_HISTFILE="/developement/language/r/.Rhistory")

The path is correct, as returned by command

R > Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE")

Following this documentation, it seems there is no need to tell R explicitly to load history (loadhistory("path/to/HISTFILE"). When I run R on my terminal, there is no history.

What am I doing wrong ? Thank you for help

Answer 1

For some reason the R documentation on how to load the history is not updated or correct. Apparently the only way to get it to work is by using the utils:: hook for the library that contain the loadhistory() function. In your .Rprofile, add the line like this:

if(interactive()) try(utils::loadhistory(file="C:/pathto/home/xxxx/.Rhistory"))

Trying to load this without the hook, results in a "function not found" error.

Answer 2

I found the reason why I couldn't load my HISTFILE.This file had to be renamed with at least one letter before .Rhistory.

> loadhistory("path/to/.Rhistory") # loads no commands
> loadhistory("path/to/R.Rhistory") # loads indeed command history