[R] Non-interactive sessions

Thomas Lumley
Fri, 17 Sep 1999 23:18:12 -0000

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Neil E. Klepeis wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Quick Summary:   How does R function non-interactively?  I can't print
> graphics to an X11 window.
>
> I set up what appears to be called a "noninteractive" R session
using
> the Perl code at the end of this message.  Everthing seems to work fine
> as written.  I get a nice postscript file with my graphics.
>
> However, I would like to display X11 R-graphics for the Perl-script
> user.  Is there some way of sending commands to R to configure this
> "noninterative mode"?  Especially so that I can produce X11
graphics.

You need to explicitly start an x11 driver if you are not running
interactively, ie using the  x11() function.


> Another related issue:  When I first sent the pipe to R (with no
> options) it didn't work and I got the following error message:
>
> " Fatal error : you must specify '--save',
'--no-save', or '--vanilla' "
>
> What is the '--vanilla' option all about?

--vanilla is a debugging option. As R --help reports:

  --vanilla                 Combine --no-save, --no-restore,--no-site-file,
                            --no-init-file, and --no-environ.


Thomas Lumley
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics
University of Washington, Seattle