[Rd] --interactive and -f/-e

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Mick Jordan <mick.jordan at oracle.com>
>>>>>     on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:11:54 -0700 writes:

    > I was surprised by this:
    > R --interactive -e 'interactive()'

    > bash-3.2$ R -q -e 'interactive()' --interactive
    >> interactive()
    > [1] FALSE
    >> 

    > as the command options document says that --interactive should force 
    > interactive=TRUE:

    > " When *R* is run in a terminal (via |Rterm.exe| on Windows), it assumes 
    > that it is interactive if ‘stdin’ is connected to a (pseudo-)terminal 
    > and not if ‘stdin’ is redirected to a file or pipe. Command-line options 
    > --interactive (Unix) and --ess (Windows, |Rterm.exe|) override the 
    > default assumption"

    > But the code in system.c does this:

    > R_Interactive = R_Interactive && (force_interactive || isatty(0));

    > R_Interactive is set to FALSE in the -e/-f processing, and 
    > force_interactive is set to TRUE in the --interactive processing, so 
    > there is no way that it can ever override -e/-f. It seems that 
    > --interactive can only have an effect for something like a pipe. Is this 
    > actually the expected behavior?

I did not write the code, but maybe "yes".

It may also seem a bit peculiar that it matters *where* on the
commandline --interactive is given :

	R -q -e 'interactive()' --interactive

behaves quite differently from	

	R --interactive -q -e 'interactive()'
and	R -q --interactive -e 'interactive()'

the latter two behaving equally, and indeed just starting R
interactively and not obeying the '-e ..' part(s)  at all.

Reading the source shows that -e is really just a short cut for
-f / --file=*, because -e writes to a tempfile and then proceeds
as -f (with the tempfile).

As you mentioned "something like a pipe": '--interactive' does
work fine when R is reading from stdin, not just via a pipe,

  $ echo 'interactive(); 1+1' | R --interactive --vanilla -q
  > interactive(); 1+1
  [1] TRUE
  [1] 2
  > 
  $ 

but of course, e.g., also by explicitly reading a file from stdin : 

  $ echo 'interactive(); commandArgs()' > /tmp/e1.R
  $ R --interactive --vanilla -q  < /tmp/e1.R
  > interactive(); commandArgs()
  [1] TRUE
  [1] "/........../bin/exec/R"
  [2] "--interactive"                                   
  [3] "--vanilla"                                       
  [4] "-q"                                              
  > 
  $ echo 'x <- 1:7; interactive(); x' > /tmp/e2.R
  $ R --interactive --vanilla -q  < /tmp/e2.R
  > x <- 1:7; interactive(); x
  [1] TRUE
  [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  > 
  $ 

So, in principle it should not seem hard to make --interactive
work for '-e' and '-f' as well, but I don't see quickly how.
Just changing the line in unix/system.c you've mentioned above
is clearly not enough.

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich