[R] Navigation keys not working

[Loris Bennett]

Hi,

Fazulur Rehaman <fazulur.r at ocimumbio.com> writes:

> Dear Sir/Madam,
>
> Navigation keys not working in R installed on linux (Linux version
> 3.10.0-327.10.1.el7.x86_64). I am using R version 3.0.1. When I press
> up arrow its giving "^[[A".  Could you please suggest me how to
> overcome this problem.
>
> Here is my R session Info
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)
> Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>
> locale:
>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>  [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C
>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>> ^[[A^[[A^[[A^[[A^[[A^[[A
>
> Thanks in Advance.
> Rehaman

It looks as if your version of R may not be linked to the readline
library.  You can check the shared libraries linked to the binary with
'ldd'. e.g.

$ ldd /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R 
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff235ed000)
	libR.so => /usr/lib/libR.so (0x00007f3bfa692000)
	libgomp.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgomp.so.1 (0x00007f3bfa47c000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f3bfa25f000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f3bf9eb4000)
	libblas.so.3 => /usr/lib/libblas.so.3 (0x00007f3bf9c34000)
	libgfortran.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgfortran.so.3 (0x00007f3bf9916000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f3bf9615000)
	libquadmath.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libquadmath.so.0 (0x00007f3bf93d8000)
	libreadline.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libreadline.so.6 (0x00007f3bf918e000)
	libpcre.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007f3bf8f20000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0x00007f3bf8cfd000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f3bf8aed000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f3bf88d2000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f3bf86ca000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f3bf84c6000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f3bfabb8000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f3bf82b0000)
	libtinfo.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 (0x00007f3bf8086000)

For the arrow keys to allow you to traverse the command history, you
will need an entry containing 'libreadline.so'.

If it is missing, you will have to rebuild R, making sure that the
'configure' option '--with-readline=yes' is set.  This is actually the
default, but you are using an old version of R, so it may not have been
back then.  Also your readline library might be in a strange place and
wasn't found by 'configure'.  In that case, you would have to ensure
that it is in the variable $LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Cheers,

Loris

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