[R] Clipboard size?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Rich FitzJohn wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
>> From ?file:
> Clipboard:
> ...
>     When writing to the clipboard, the output is copied to the
>     clipboard only when the connection is closed or flushed. There is
>     a 32Kb limit on the text to be written to the clipboard. This can
>     be raised by using e.g. 'file("clipboard-128")' on NT-based
>     versions of Windows, to give 128Kb.
>
> So,
>> write.table(dm, "clipboard", sep="\t")
> Warning message:
> clipboard buffer is full and output lost
>> write.table(dm, "clipboard-128", sep = "\t")

Just to add: this is not the same as copying in Excel or a text editor.
The equivalent of that is writeClipboard(), and that is not limited by R
(although it is by Windows).  Here you are treating the clipboard as a 
sequential file.

The reason for the choice of 32Kb is that is the clipboard limit on 16-bit 
versions of Windows, perpetuated in Win95 (at least).


> On 4/21/05, Chris Bergstresser <chris at subtlety.com> wrote:
>> Hi all --
>>
>>    I have a matrix of doubles (roughly 30x80) which I'd like to copy to
>> the clipboard.  However, as the following shows:
>>
>>> dm = matrix(runif(30 * 80), nrow = 80)
>>> write.table(dm, "clipboard", sep = "\t")
>> Warning message:
>> clipboard buffer is full and output lost
>>
>>    Is there any way to increase the buffer?  Obviously, other programs
>> don't have the same limitations (i.e., I can copy the same volume of
>> data from Excel or my text editor and paste it into R without a problem)

-- 
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