[R] Pausing processing into an interactive session

[Zhou Fang]

Hi all,

As a possibly silly request, is it possible to interactively pause a
R-calculation and do a browser(), say, without browser or other debug
handlers being explicitly included in the code?

Imagine the following situation:

You write up a big calculation for R to calculate. We are talking
hours here, or worse. A few hours into the calculation, you decide
that you want to check on how it's going. Unfortunately, you didn't
forsee the output you really want to check on. Oops.

What would seem ideal is something like this: as well as Ctrl-C, which
would terminate the current computation, we really want some key combo
perhaps that would pause the computation, perhaps at the next
'reasonable spot'. (Not Ctrl-Z either, as it doesn't let you look at
what's going on in the program). Then you can examine variables, for
example. Maybe even tweak them manually. And press the key to resume
the calculation.

Is this already possible somehow? Can it be made possible? Or would
there not be any point?

Thanks,

Zhou