[Rd] Can the output of Sys.getenv() be improved?

[William Dunlap]

>     >> structure(Sys.getenv(), class="simple.list")
>     >                            _ !
> 
> Good idea; this is something we could do unconditionally, i.e.,
> return from Sys.getenv().

As the OP noted, the print method for simple.list will pad all
lines to have the same length, so if, say, PATH, is very long,
all other printed lines will be padded with blanks to match its
length.  With the Windows GUI you don't notice this much
because the lines do not wrap around, but when viewing results
on Linux with a terminal emulator like putty this looks bad.  A print method like
   p <- function(x, ...)
   {
      cat(formatDL(x), sep="\n")
      invisible(x)
   }
would look better.

Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Maechler [mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch]
> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2014 5:57 AM
> To: William Dunlap
> Cc: Jun Zhang; r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Can the output of Sys.getenv() be improved?
> 
> >>>>> William Dunlap <wdunlap at tibco.com>
> >>>>>     on Fri, 18 Apr 2014 16:50:22 +0000 writes:
> 
>     >> Within an R session, type Sys.getenv() will list all the
>     >> environment variables, but each one of them occupies
>     >> about a page, so scrolling to find one is difficult. Is
>     >> this because I don't know how to use it or something
>     >> could be improved?
> 
>     > Attaching the class "simple.list" to the output of
>     > Sys.getenv() gives it a nicer print method:
> 
>     >> structure(Sys.getenv(), class="simple.list")
>     >                            _ !
> 
> Good idea; this is something we could do unconditionally, i.e.,
> return from Sys.getenv().
> It would hardly break code,
> as simple.list only has a print and a `[` method.
> 
> It would help people like Jun and could hardly harm, AFAICS.
> 
> Opinions?