[R] The "--slave" option ==> will become "--no-echo"

[William Michels]

Apologies, Duncan and Martin. I didn't check "R --help" first. You're
quite right, lots of embedded hyphens.

Best Regards, Bill.

W. Michels, Ph.D.

On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 2:42 PM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 27/09/2019 5:36 p.m., William Michels via R-help wrote:
> > Hi Martin,
> >
> > '--no-echo'
> >
> > ....or....
> >
> > '--no_echo'
> >
> > Obviously you may prefer the first, but I hope you might consider the second.
>
> Are you serious?  That's a terrible suggestion.  Run "R --help" and
> you'll see *no* options with underscores, and a dozen with embedded hyphens.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > W. Michels, Ph.D.
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 9:04 AM Martin Maechler
> > <maechler using stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>>>> Martin Maechler
> >>>>>>>      on Mon, 23 Sep 2019 16:14:36 +0200 writes:
> >>
> >>>>>>> Richard O'Keefe
> >>>>>>>      on Sat, 21 Sep 2019 09:39:18 +1200 writes:
> >>
> >>      >> Ah, *now* we're getting somewhere.  There is something
> >>      >> that *can* be done that's genuinely helpful.
> >>      >>> From the R(1) manual page:
> >>      >> -q, --quiet Don't print startup message
> >>
> >>      >> --silent Same as --quiet
> >>
> >>      >> --slave Make R run as quietly as possible
> >>
> >>      >> It might have been better to use --nobanner instead of
> >>      >> --quiet.  So perhaps
> >>
> >>      >> -q, --quiet Don't print the startup message.  This is
> >>      >> the only output that is suppressed.
> >>
> >>      >> --silent Same as --quiet.  Suppress the startup
> >>      >> message only.
> >>
> >>      >> --slave Make R run as quietly as possible.  This is
> >>      >> for use when running R as a subordinate process.  See
> >>      >> "Introduction to Sub-Processes in R"
> >>      >> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/subprocess/vignettes/intro.html
> >>      >> for an example.
> >>
> >>      > Thank you, Stephen and Richard.
> >>
> >>      > I think we (the R Core Team) *can* make the description a bit
> >>      > more verbose. However, as practically all "--<foo>" descriptions
> >>      > are fitting in one short line, (and as the 'subprocess' package is just an
> >>      > extension pkg, and may disappear (and more reasons)) I'd like to
> >>      > be less verbose than your proposal.
> >>
> >>      > What about
> >>
> >>      > -q, --quiet               Don't print startup message
> >>
> >>      > --silent          Same as --quiet
> >>
> >>      > --slave           Make R run as quietly as possible.  For use when
> >>      > runnning R as sub(ordinate) process.
> >>
> >>      > If you look more closely, you'll notice that --slave is not much
> >>      > quieter than --quiet, the only (?) difference being that the
> >>      > input is not copied and (only "mostly") the R prompt is also not printed.
> >>
> >>      > And from my experiments (in Linux (Fedora 30)), one might even
> >>      > notice that in some cases --slave prints the R prompt (to stderr?)
> >>      > which one might consider bogous (I'm not: not wanting to spend
> >>      > time fixing this platform-independently) :
> >>
> >>      > --slave :
> >>      > ------------------------
> >>
> >>      > MM using lynne$ echo '(i <- 1:3)
> >>      > i*10' | R-3.6.1 --slave --vanilla
> >>      >> [1] 1 2 3
> >>      > [1] 10 20 30
> >>      > MM using lynne$ f=/tmp/Rslave.out$$; echo '(i <- 1:3)
> >>      > i*10' | R-3.6.1 --slave --vanilla | tee $f
> >>      >> [1] 1 2 3
> >>      > [1] 10 20 30
> >>      > MM using lynne$ cat $f
> >>      > [1] 1 2 3
> >>      > [1] 10 20 30
> >>
> >>      > --quiet :
> >>      > ------------------------
> >>
> >>      > MM using lynne$ f=/tmp/Rquiet.out$$; echo '(i <- 1:3)
> >>      > i*10' | R-3.6.1 --quiet --vanilla | tee $f
> >>      >> (i <- 1:3)
> >>      > [1] 1 2 3
> >>      >> i*10
> >>      > [1] 10 20 30
> >>      >>
> >>      > MM using lynne$ cat $f
> >>      >> (i <- 1:3)
> >>      > [1] 1 2 3
> >>      >> i*10
> >>      > [1] 10 20 30
> >>      >>
> >>      > MM using lynne$
> >>
> >>      > ------------------------
> >>
> >>      > But there's a bit more to it: In my examples above, both --quiet
> >>      > and --slave where used together with --vanilla.  In general
> >>      > --slave *also* never saves, i.e., uses the equivalent of
> >>      > q('no'), where as --quiet does [ask or ...].
> >>
> >>      > Last but not least, from very simply reading R's source code on
> >>      > this, it becomes blatant that you can use  '-s'  instead of '--slave',
> >>      > but we (R Core) have probably not documented that on purpose (so
> >>      > we could reserve it for something more important, and redefine
> >>      > the simple use of '-s' some time in the future ?)
> >>
> >>      > So, all those who want to restrict their language could use '-s'
> >>      > for now.  In addition, we could add  >> one <<  other alias to
> >>      > --slave, say --subprocess (or --quieter ? or ???)
> >>      > and one could make that the preferred use some time in the future.
> >>
> >>      > Well, these were another two hours of time *not* spent improving
> >>      > R technically, but spent reading e-mails, source code, and considering.
> >>      > Maybe well spent, maybe not ...
> >>
> >>      > Martin Maechler
> >>      > ETH Zurich and R Core Team
> >>
> >> With in the   R Core Team    we have considered the issue.
> >>
> >> As a consequence, I have committed a few minutes ago code changes
> >> that replace '--slave' by '--no-echo' .
> >> [This will be in R-devel versions from svn rev 77229 and of
> >>   course in the "big step" release around April 2020].
> >>
> >> Among other considerations, we found that  '--no-echo' was
> >> really much more self-explaining, as indeed the command line
> >> option turns off the echo'ing of the R code that is executed,
> >> and on the C level is indeed very much related to R level
> >>
> >>      options(echo = "no")
> >>
> >> For back compatibility reasons, the old command line option will
> >> continue to work so the many shell and other scripts that use
> >> it, will not stop working.
> >>
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> Martin Maechler
> >> ETH Zurich and R Core Team
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
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> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
>