[R] R_LIBS difficulty ?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, François Pinard wrote:

> Hi, R people.
>
> I'm shy reporting this, as a bug in this area sounds very unlikely.  Did
> I make my tests wrongly?  I'm still flaky at all this.  Let me dare
> nevertheless, who knows, just in case...  Please don't kill me! :-)
>
> Not so long ago, I wrote to this list:
>
>> (For now, [the library code] works only for me when I do _not_ use `-l
>> MY/OWN/LIBDIR' at `R CMD INSTALL' time, I surely made a simple blunder
>> somewhere.  Hopefully, I'll figure it out.)
>
> Now using this line within `~/.Renviron':
>
>   R_LIBS=/home/pinard/etc/R
>
> my tiny package is correctly found by R.  However, R does not seem to
> see any library within that directory if I rather use either of:
>
>   R_LIBS=$HOME/etc/R
>   R_LIBS="$HOME/etc/R"

Correct, and as documented.

See the description in ?Startup, which says things like ${foo-bar} are 
allowed but not $HOME, and not ${HOME}/bah or even ${HOME}.

But R_LIBS=~/etc/R will work in .Renviron since ~ is intepreted by R in 
paths.

> The last writing (I mean, something similar) is suggested somewhere in
> the R manuals (but I do not have the manual with me right now to give
> the exact reference, I'm in another town).

It is not mentioned in an R manual, but it is mentioned in the FAQ.
R_LIBS=$HOME/etc/R will work in a shell (and R_LIBS=~/etc/R may not).

> Another hint that it could be expected to work is that the same
> `~/.Renviron' once contained the line:
>
>   R_BROWSER=$HOME/bin/links
>
> which apparently worked as expected.  (This `links' script launches the
> real program with `-g' appended whenever `DISPLAY' is defined.)

Yes, but that was not interpreted by R, rather a shell script called by R.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595