[R] Increasing Console "Paste Buffer"

[Sander Oom]

An interesting thought just came to me when reading this discussion! I 
use both R and Latex and have never had the trouble of overlooking error 
messages when debugging long Latex code!

Of course this is because when compiling a latex document, a summary of 
the compilation process is provided at the end! If any errors occurred, 
they will be mentioned in the summary.

Maybe R could provide the same summary as an optional part of the 
source() command!?

Cheers,

Sander.



Gavin Simpson wrote:
> Jan T. Kim wrote:
>> On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 11:47:05PM +0100, Gavin Simpson wrote:
>>
>>> Manuel Morales wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello list.
>>>>
>>>> I'm using R from the gnome-terminal in Fedora. My preference is to 
>>>> write
>>>> programs in VIM, and then source the file from R, or copy and paste the
>>>> lines into the console. I'm wondering if there is a way to increase the
>>>> "paste buffer" as an alternative to "sourcing" large analyses. As was
>>>> mentioned in a recent thread on Linux GUI's, I find that if I paste 
>>>> in a
>>>> large amount of text, the lines end up getting cut off at some point. I
>>>> wonder if this is an R restriction, because it seems like I am able to
>>>> paste substantially more text in other console-based programs. Is there
>>>> any way to increase the amount of text that I can paste into an R
>>>> session?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> Manuel
>>>>
>>>
>>> Manuel,
>>>
>>> Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "lines end up getting cut off 
>>> at some point" so correct me if I got it wrong, but I assume you mean 
>>> that after a certain number of lines entered you can no longer scroll 
>>> back up and view the earlier lines?
>>
>>
>> I think that this is not an issue of the scroll buffer, but of buffers
>> internal to the terminal program or the shell, which are designed to hold
>> keyboard input and which can be overwhelmed by the rate of input when
>> large text selections are pasted in, as this appears as though thousands
>> of keys had been typed almost instantaneously from their view, so to 
>> speak.
> 
> I did say I was guessing :-)
> 
>>
>> For these reasons, I generally strongly recommend against pasting into
>> terminals.
> 
> Thanks for this Jan. I haven't noticed this myself but then again I hate 
> copy/paste and rarely use R outside emacs/ess these days.
> 
>> In R, use the source() instead...  ;-)
> 
> Agreed. source("filename", echo = TRUE) will sort of replicate the 
> behaviour the original poster would get if they like to see the commands 
> printed among the results. But if he is pasting in that much data, 
> Manuel will still have to increase the buffer on the terminal, 
> especially if he is using one of the defaults in FC3 as the output will 
> quickly get lost.
> 
>> Best regards, Jan
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Gav
> 


-- 
--------------------------------------------
Dr Sander P. Oom
Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences,
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa
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