[R-SIG-Mac] system('man R') works in Mac unix R but not in GUI R

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Joseph Kunkel <joe at bio.umass.edu> wrote:
> Using  R 2.12.2 GUI 1.36 Leopard build 64-bit (5691)
>
> system('man R') gives error: 'No manual entry for R' ...  ??
>
> Running R in a unix window the system('man R') function provides the expected manual entry.
>
> This complicates my teaching of R with the Gui if I want to use the system('R ...') function.   Students need to know unix-window-use as a prereq.
>
> system('man vi')  however does provide the correct unix vi manual in either unix or GUI.

Well, as you might know, setting PATH and other environment variables
in the terminal using, say .profile or .bashrc, does not make them set
inside of a GUI.  This has been discussed many times on this list (and
really has nothing to do with R at all).

In this case it is because vi ships with the system and the man page
for vi is in
# man -w vi
/usr/share/man/man1/vi.1.gz

I do not have the GUI (CRAN) version of R installed, but I would guess
that the man page is in /usr/local/share ..., and you can check the
directories man searches by
# man -d

Kasper