[R-pkg-devel] R CMD BATCH plot output

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 28 July 2024 at 15:44, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
| On 2024-07-28 1:48 p.m., Josiah Parry wrote:
| > However, if plots are generated in the process, the plots are stored in
| > Rplots.pdf.
| > 
| > Is there a way via command line arguments to change the name of the pdf
| > output.
| > 
| > There might be multiple runs of this script and it would be ideal to store
| > the plot output independently.
| 
| That's the default filename if you open a PDF device.  Open it

It's the default (and fallback) device and filename you fail to specify
something else. Ie 'Rscript -e "plot(1:10)"' will create it too.

My preferred alternative is to wrap call to plot() with actual device create
(something like 'if (!interactive()) pdf(my_filename, 8. 6)' with a
corresponding 'if (!interactive()) dev.off()' to ensure the file finalised
and close.

If we cannot (or do not want to) modify the given main.R, I would suggest
something along the lines of

  Rscript -e 'pdf(myfilenamevar); source("main.R"); dev.off()' | tee 2024-07-28.log

and Bob's your uncle now in terms of how you spec the filename.

In short, I would let go of `R CMD BATCH` if it does not do what you want.

Dirk

-- 
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