[R-sig-teaching] workspace management

[William Revelle]

My solution is a bit different.

Most student oriented files are relatively small (less than 1 MB) and 
can just be copied to the clipboard from their editor/spreadsheet 
progam.

Most students know how to open excel or text files.  I have them do 
that and then just copy the data to the clipboard (from Excel or 
OpenOffice or Word or their favorite text editor)

then,
my.data <- read.clipboard()   #from the psych package

and their data are in a suitable format.
If they are copying from excel,
my.data <- read.clipboard.tab()  #will read directly from an Excel file
my.data <- read.clipboard.csv()  # will read from a file in comma 
delimited form.
etc.

The one problem I have had doing this is some student's do not know 
what the clipboard is!

Bill


At 1:44 PM -0400 11/2/10, Ralph O'Brien, PhD wrote:
>========================
>If you have a path with backslashes in the Windows clipboard you can
>just do this:
>
>myPath <- readClipboard()
>setwd(myPath)
>
>which eliminates the need for any conversion.
>========================
>
>But this is still Windows-centric functionality (not platform independent)
>and it hides what dataset was in play (not a good programming practice in
>the real world).
>
>On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Gabor Grothendieck
><ggrothendieck at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Ralph O'Brien, PhD
>>  <obrienralph at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  > A huge plus for R is that it runs nearly identically on all three major
>>  > platforms. There is every reason to make our teaching as
>>  > platform-independent as we can.
>>  >
>>  > The choose.dir() function is not found on the Mac release (I'm still at
>>  v.
>>  > 2.11.1), so I would advise against using it, especially since it is
>>  trivial
>>  > to teach and use code that is "plain vanilla."
>>  >
>>  > My scripts to students begin with something like:
>>  >
>>  > # Uncomment one of these path2data statements and
>>  > # insert your appropriate path specification.
>>  > # path2data <- "C:/EPBI431/datasets"   # Windows (convert to forward
>>  > slashes)
>>  >  # path2data <- "/Users/ralphobrien/AllDocs/teaching/EPBI431/datasets"
>>  #
>>  > Mac OS
>>  > setwd(path2data)
>>  >
>>  > Later, I might simply give them:
>>  >
>>  > # setwd("C:/EPBI431/datasets")  # Windows (convert to forward slashes)
>>  > # setwd("/Users/ralphobrien/AllDocs/teaching/EPBI431/datasets")  # Mac OS
>>  >
>>  > Some students have never encountered path specifications, so when I
>>  > introduce this, I show them how to use "Properties" (Windows XP) and "Get
>>  > Info" (Mac OS) to copy-paste what is needed, converting the back slashes
>>  to
>>  > forward slashes for Windows.
>>
>>  If you have a path with backslashes in the Windows clipboard you can
>>  just do this:
>>
>>  myPath <- readClipboard()
>>  setwd(myPath)
>>
>>  which eliminates the need for any conversion.
>>
>>
>>  --
>>  Statistics & Software Consulting
>>  GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
>>  tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
>>  email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
>>
>
>
>
>--
>Ralph O'Brien, PhD
>Professor, Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
>Case Western Reserve University
>Office: 216.368.1927
>Cell: 216.312.3203
>
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>
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