[R] plotting to stdout (while reading from stdin?)

[Gabor Grothendieck]

You can do this:

Lines <- "A,B
1,2
3,4"
DF <- read.csv(textConnection(Lines))

which is slightly simpler than the examples there.


On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Gene Selkov <selkovjr at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> Hi Dirk,
>
> I didn't at first pay attention to your comment about littler, as my
> original problem of plotting to stdout was solved. But it was just part of
> the larger problem: I actually need to be piping the data with the code
> for making the picture in, and getting the picture out without opening any
> files. This is to be run in a server environment, where the use of temp
> files is not really acceptable.
>
> Having solved half of the problem, I feel cornered again, because I
> haven't found a nice way of mixing code and data in R.
>
> I am aware that this issue was brought up before; I am not sure I like the
> solutions suggested, because they involve the R language parsing and
> interpreting for each data row -- if I understand correctly.
>
>   http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/03a/6750.html
>
> Are these solutions the best currently available? That thread is almost 5
> years old now.
>
> Let me give you an example of what I would like to be possible:
>
> In postgres, I can read this from stdin:
>
>    CREATE TABLE remark (
>      "case" smallint,
>      text text
>    );
>
>    COPY remark ("case", text) FROM stdin;
>    877     lymph node biopsy
>    909     Unresectable mass in the body of the pancreas
>    \.
>
>    ... more SQL ....
>
> It allows the "code" and "input" chunks to be mixed, because the
> input for stdin is always terminated by a special token, '\.', and so the
> parser can skip the data chunks without interpreting them.
>
> Almost similarly, perl has the __DATA__ token, that allows a portion of
> text within a program to be treated as stdin.
>
> I wonder whether anything like this is possible in R or littler.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> --Gene
>
>
> On Fri, 7 Sep 2007, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 02:27:00PM -0400, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> >> On 9/7/2007 2:15 PM, Gene Selkov wrote:
> >>> Thanks a ton, Duncan!
> >>>
> >>> So I have verified that this line works:
> >>>
> >>>    echo "postscript(file=\"\", command=\"cat\"); plot(0)" | r --vanilla --slave
> >>>
> >>> Wonderful! (albeit a little unobvious)
> >>
> >> I would include an explicit "dev.off()" after the plotting; I'm not sure
> >> all devices guarantee a clean shutdown when R quits.
> >
> > And for the record, both littler and Rscript can do that without the
> > need for double quotes, at least under Linux.  E.g. both
> >
> > $ r -e 'postscript(file="", command="cat"); plot(0)' | head
> > $ Rscript -e 'postscript(file="", command="cat"); plot(0)' | head
> >
> > provide the same output (of the beginning of the postscript output).
> > Our r is as usual somewhat faster, not that this matters in this
> > non-repeat context.
> >
> > Dirk
> >
> > --
> > Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.
> >
>
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