R help - Dec 2009 - how to set column width of terminal output?

Hi,

I am new to this list and my question may be trivial, I did however not 
find an answer to it using the help.search or RSiteSearch features of R. 
This is my question:

R seems to break lines of terminal output at a column which is 
independent of how wide I have made my terminal. I would have expected R 
to honor the COLUMNS environment variable, but that seems not to be the 
case. So is there an R internal variable I have to configure, something 
like the fill-column of emacs?

If my terminal is wide enough to show a wide table, I want to be able to 
print it like that and not have R print a first set of columns followed 
by a second set.

thanks,
Michael

-- 
Michael Olberg                           <michael.olberg at chalmers.se>
SRON                                           tel: +31-(0)50-3638028
Landleven 12, P.O.Box 800,                     fax: +31-(0)50-3634033
NL-9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands       mobile: +31-(0)63-1236953
----------------- This quote left blank intentionally ---------------

On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, Michael Olberg wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am new to this list and my question may be trivial,
But the answer depends on the 'at a minimum' information requested in 
the posting guide.  My comments below only apply to the standard 
Unix-alike R and Rterm.exe.  Many other front-ends do set the width 
from the console/terminal width.
> I did however not find an answer to it using the help.search or 
> RSiteSearch features of R. This is my question:
>
> R seems to break lines of terminal output at a column which is independent
of
> how wide I have made my terminal. I would have expected R to honor the 
> COLUMNS environment variable, but that seems not to be the case. So is
there
> an R internal variable I have to configure, something like the fill-column
of
> emacs?
>
> If my terminal is wide enough to show a wide table, I want to be able to 
> print it like that and not have R print a first set of columns followed by
a
> second set.
?options, look for 'width'.  You could add something like

options(width=Sys.getenv("COLUMNS"))

to a startup file if you have COLUMNS set in your environment.

> thanks,
> Michael
>
> -- 
> Michael Olberg                           <michael.olberg at
chalmers.se>
> SRON                                           tel: +31-(0)50-3638028
> Landleven 12, P.O.Box 800,                     fax: +31-(0)50-3634033
> NL-9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands       mobile: +31-(0)63-1236953
> ----------------- This quote left blank intentionally ---------------
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595