R help - Apr 2004 - Assigning functions in Rprofile

I use the ugly hack shown below as my .Rprofile (mainly because I couldn't
find any other way to spawn a new mozilla window on starting R or calling
help.start(), but then send all the help html documents to that new
window).

With a recent change from a cvs checkout to the released 1.9.0 I find that
the new hs() appears if there is nothing of that name in .RData, but if
there is the old hs() there, it just stays.

What is the cause of this?

Thanks,
Robert.

I'm using a debian i386 system.

.Rprofile
========library(gld)
options(pager="less",CRAN="ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/cran")
hs <- function(){
if (nchar(system("echo $DISPLAY",intern=T))==0) # no X
        {options(htmlhelp=FALSE)
        ret <- "no X"}
else    {system("mozilla") # we have X - I'm starting this to get
a new
        # window for the R session, without starting a new window every
time
       
options(pdfviewer="/usr/local/bin/acroread",browser="mozilla")
        help.start()
        ret <- "X"}
ret
}


----
Robert King, Statistics, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences,
University of Newcastle, Australia
Room V133  ph +61 2 4921 5548
Robert.King at newcastle.edu.au   http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/

He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that
not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD.
        -- Jeremiah 22:16

Robert King wrote:
> I use the ugly hack shown below as my .Rprofile (mainly because I
couldn't
> find any other way to spawn a new mozilla window on starting R or calling
> help.start(), but then send all the help html documents to that new
> window).
> 
> With a recent change from a cvs checkout to the released 1.9.0 I find that
> the new hs() appears if there is nothing of that name in .RData, but if
> there is the old hs() there, it just stays.
> 
> What is the cause of this?
Because .Rprofile is loaded before .RData. Hence tho "old" version 
overwrites the new one ...

Uwe Ligges

> Thanks,
> Robert.
> 
> I'm using a debian i386 system.
> 
> .Rprofile
> ========> library(gld)
>
options(pager="less",CRAN="ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/cran")
> hs <- function(){
> if (nchar(system("echo $DISPLAY",intern=T))==0) # no X
>         {options(htmlhelp=FALSE)
>         ret <- "no X"}
> else    {system("mozilla") # we have X - I'm starting this to
get a new
>         # window for the R session, without starting a new window every
> time
>        
options(pdfviewer="/usr/local/bin/acroread",browser="mozilla")
>         help.start()
>         ret <- "X"}
> ret
> }
> 
> 
> ----
> Robert King, Statistics, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences,
> University of Newcastle, Australia
> Room V133  ph +61 2 4921 5548
> Robert.King at newcastle.edu.au   http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/
> 
> He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that
> not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD.
>         -- Jeremiah 22:16
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Robert King wrote:
> I use the ugly hack shown below as my .Rprofile (mainly because I
couldn't
> find any other way to spawn a new mozilla window on starting R or calling
> help.start(), but then send all the help html documents to that new
> window).
> 
> With a recent change from a cvs checkout to the released 1.9.0 I find that
> the new hs() appears if there is nothing of that name in .RData, but if
> there is the old hs() there, it just stays.
> 
> What is the cause of this?
?Startup tells you that .RData is loaded after .Rprofile is executed, but 
it has been that way for quite a while.  So this is behaving as 
documented, AFAICS.

What is new is that help.start() is now in package utils so you should be 
using utils::help.start() to be safe.
> 
> Thanks,
> Robert.
> 
> I'm using a debian i386 system.
> 
> .Rprofile
> ========> library(gld)
>
options(pager="less",CRAN="ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/cran")
> hs <- function(){
> if (nchar(system("echo $DISPLAY",intern=T))==0) # no X
>         {options(htmlhelp=FALSE)
>         ret <- "no X"}
> else    {system("mozilla") # we have X - I'm starting this to
get a new
>         # window for the R session, without starting a new window every
> time
>        
options(pdfviewer="/usr/local/bin/acroread",browser="mozilla")
>         help.start()
>         ret <- "X"}
> ret
> }
-- 
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