R devel - May 2015 - C-API: check whether R has been initialized ?

Hi,

There appear to be no way to check whether R has already been initialized.

Could a function like "Rf_isinitialized" be added to the API ?


Best,


Laurent

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On 03/05/2015 4:34 PM, Laurent Gautier wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There appear to be no way to check whether R has already been initialized.
> 
> Could a function like "Rf_isinitialized" be added to the API ?
> 
Surely any program that needs to know that could keep its own flag.
You'll need to give a much longer argument about why this is necessary
for what you're doing.

Duncan Murdoch

Beside the possible argumentation that with an API elegance and convenience
might sometimes be superior to necessity, the suggested pattern ("every
program, including R itself, keeping its own flag") does no work too well
when the nested embedding of R is involved.

A concrete example is:
```
$ R -q
> library('rPython'); python.exec('import rpy2.robjects')
R is already initialized
```

https://bitbucket.org/rpy2/rpy2/issue/278/r-in-python-via-rpy2-in-r-via-rpython#comment-17843761

2015-05-03 18:12 GMT-04:00 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>:
> On 03/05/2015 4:34 PM, Laurent Gautier wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > There appear to be no way to check whether R has already been
> initialized.
> >
> > Could a function like "Rf_isinitialized" be added to the API
?
> >
>
> Surely any program that needs to know that could keep its own flag.
> You'll need to give a much longer argument about why this is necessary
> for what you're doing.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>
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