[R] editor argument in edit()

[Tito de Morais Luis]

Hi dear listers,

In R 1.7 under linux, if I try to edit a vector, it can be edit using
any editor:
z<- c(1,2,3,4)
edit(z) #opens vi
edit(z, editor="gnumeric") #opens "z" in gnumeric
edit(z, editor="gedit") #opens "z" in gedit

It is similar in Windows98 (R 1.8) :

edit(z) #opens z in notepad
edit(z, editor="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office\\Excel.exe")
#opens z in excel

The behaviour is similar, yet in gnumeric the values are in separated
cells whereas in excel all z  (in fact c(1,2,3,4)) is in one cell.
 
But if I want to edit the results of a calculation:
data(USArrests)
prres <- prcomp(USArrests, scale = TRUE)

edit(prres$rotation, editor='gnumeric') #in linux it opens the R-editor,
not gnumeric

the same in windows:
edit(prres$rotation, editor="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft
Office\\Office\\Excel.exe") #in windows runs the R editor, not excel

My questions are:

a) Is it possible to edit the result of a calculation (like
prres$rotation above) using an external spreadsheet program and not the
R-editor ?

b) If (a) is possible how can the data be edited in excel with one
single value per cell ?

c) If (a) is not possible, can the r-editor window be printed directly ?

Thank you for any help.

L. Tito

PS : I know that I can save results with write.table() and then open the
external file with any program. I just want to know if it is possible to
edit the results directly.

-- 
L. Tito de Morais
      UR RAP
   IRD de Dakar
      BP 1386
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      Sénégal

Tél.: + 221 849 33 31
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Courriel: tito at ird.sn