[Rd] cat with backspace and newline characters
Martin Maechler
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Tue Nov 5 14:50:04 CET 2013
>>>>> Brian G Peterson <brian at braverock.com>
>>>>> on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 07:30:14 -0600 writes:
> On 11/05/2013 07:22 AM, Martin Maechler wrote:
>> which --- as you allude to below --- shows that RStudio
>> has changed R in so far that it adds a '\n' even when R,
>> i.e. cat() does not.
>>
>> I can understand that the RStudio programmers want to
>> protect their users (*) from getting funny looking
>> output, but I still don't like the fact that R inside
>> RStudio is tweaked to behave differently from regular R.
> No, it just suggests exactly what Prof. Ripley alluded
> to...
> ... the output of cat() will be dependent on the display
> terminal.
> RStudio doesn't include R at all, and in fact makes use of
> the/any R binary installed via other processes. It is not
> 'tweaked'.
> It *does* include a 'terminal' to display the interactions
> with the R console.
Well I know that (it does not modify R),
but I'd say that the above is just another way to say what I said:
RStudio tweaks R's output. I agree that this is much much less
problematic than changing R objects, but I'd claim that
where as the interpretation of \b depends on the
terminal/console (and so it is quite rarely used),
the functioning of \n should not depend on the platform.
RStudio users may conclude that it is a good idea to use things like
cat("pi:", pi)
whereas they really should use something like
cat("pi:", pi, "\n)
Martin
> Regards,
> Brian
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