[R] suggestion for a small addition to the R-FAQ

[Viktor Tron]

Dear Kurt and R-ers,

Short: please add info to the faq about how to make sure you have R and how to start up the interpreter (jump to the end)

Long:

I was gonna use the tool called UCS which requires R.
So I wanted to make sure if our university system has it.
I act before I ask so I thought I check if we have R installed.
Now wait. But how?
I knew R was an interpreted language so it must have an interpreter which
I can call on the command prompt to test. But what is it called?
Although I thought it just can't be called 'R', can it, b but tried

$ which R
which: no R in .....

What now? You don't want me to type 'locate R', do you?
I cunningly tried

$ locate /R/ though with no success, but locate might not be up-to-date anyway.

with irrelevant non-hits. I was still not sure, so I thought I will
have a 'quick' look at some online manual to make sure.

I read through
- http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.pdf
- http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/INSTALL
- http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/README
- http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html

In the latter I found:

> You can also perform a ?system-wide? installation using make install. By default, this will install to the following directories:${prefix}/bin
> the front-end shell script

by no means will I tell me what it is called :-)

> ${prefix}/man/man1
> the man page

I won't tell you what to 'man' once it is.

${prefix}/lib/R
all the rest (libraries, on-line help system, ...). This is the ?R Home Directory? (R_HOME) of the installed system.

Hurray! This gave me a hint that the library dir will indeed be called R!
I tried to look at all the relevant /lib-s not finding R, but it may still
be under some exotic place.

Finally on page 4 of
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.pdf
(which I was deterred from opening first since it is a 100 page long
manual in pdf format) I found:

2. Start the R program with the command:

  $ R

Great! It is indeed an interpreter and it is called 'R'.
we didn't have it. I installed it.
However trivial such things are, since the FAQ and other mans mention
functions (even for calling help functions) without ever telling how to
make R to interpret them.

All in all may I recommand that you consider including the following
in the R FAQ Basics section:


Q: How can I make sure R is installed on my system:
A: type in
    $ which R
    or
    $ man R


Q: How do I start an interactive R session?
A: type in
    $ R
    For other ways of running R code see the manual by typing
    $ man R

Also I want to send this letter directly to the FAQ maintainer as well
but the FAQ does not contain their mail. (surely I found him with a bit of
extra work :-) May I humbly suggest that 1.5 of the FAQ be supplemented
with Kurt's (or the maintainer's) email address:

> 1.5 Feedback
>
> Feedback is of course most welcome.
> In particular, note that I do not have access to Windows or
> Macintosh systems. Features specific to the Windows and Mac OS X
> ports of R are described in the ?R for Windows FAQ? and the ?R for
> Mac OS X FAQ. If you have information on Macintosh or Windows
> systems that you think should be added to this document, please let
> me know.

Ironically the software that needed R turned out to have a
proper prerequisite tester.


Thanks
Best
Viktor
(I am not a subscriber of the help list)