[R-SIG-Mac] ESC key and STOP button not working in R 2.14.1

[Hans-Jörg Bibiko]

On 09.01.2012, at 12:45, Ken Knoblauch wrote:

> I find that the ESC key for aborting a line of code or stopping
> execution and also the STOP button are not working in R 2.14.1.
> I thought that this might be a Lion related issue as I updated
> both my OS and R version at the same time but I see the problem
> on an older machine running Snow Leopard, too.  I can't give
> an example.  Just write a line of code and hit escape before
> you hit return.  This used to abort the command.  Was this a
> bug earlier that is fixed, or is it a feature that can be ...

Hi Ken,

yes - the ESC behaviour was slightly changed/improved.

Pressing ESC while R is EXECUTING R code including statements like "system('foo', wait=T) will try to interrupt the R code AND kill 'foo' resp.

If R isn't executing something ESC invokes completion since this is the standard Mac app behaviour.

You wrote: "Just write a line of code and hit escape before you hit return.  This used to abort the command."

Well, it did not abort the command since the command wasn't executed yet, it only cleared the current command line buffer which differs from the actual intention of pressing ESC => 'Interrupt current R computation' I think.

To get the 'old' behaviour you can press ⇧⌘⇠ (standard short-cut to select from cursor position to start of line) if your cursor is at the end of the current line to select what you've already written and start typing again.


Kind regards,
--Hans