R help - Aug 2004 - RGUI Console settings

Hi all,
Would someone like to comment on the relation between the "buffer
bytes"
and "lines" settings in the console settings? Are they interdependent?
If so, how? And why allow both to be tweaked? If not, what is the effect
of changing "lines", but leaving "buffer bytes" the same? 

I wanted to be able to see more of some large outputs in my console, as
I was losing the beginning of the outputs under the default console
settings. I changed the "lines" setting from 8000 to 16000, but that
didn't seem to change the no. of lines that would display (checked with
"for(i in 1:9000) print(i)"). So then I changed the "buffer
bytes"
setting to 130000 and now the console will display what I want. But
clearly I don't really understand what is going on here ........
Thanks, Duncan


*****************************************
Dr. Duncan Mackay
School of Biological Sciences
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide
S.A.    5001
AUSTRALIA

Ph (08) 8201 2627    FAX (08) 8201 3015

http://www.scieng.flinders.edu.au/biology/people/mackay_d/index.html

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Duncan Mackay wrote:
> Would someone like to comment on the relation between the "buffer
bytes"
> and "lines" settings in the console settings? Are they
interdependent?
Both are limits, and you need enough of each.
> If so, how? And why allow both to be tweaked? If not, what is the effect
> of changing "lines", but leaving "buffer bytes" the
same?
Changing lines alone allows more (very) short lines.  Changing `buffer
bytes' alone allows longer lines.
> I wanted to be able to see more of some large outputs in my console, as
> I was losing the beginning of the outputs under the default console
> settings. I changed the "lines" setting from 8000 to 16000, but
that
> didn't seem to change the no. of lines that would display (checked with
> "for(i in 1:9000) print(i)"). 
What it seems you did not notice is that you got less than 8000 lines, so
that was not the limit you were reaching.
> So then I changed the "buffer bytes"
> setting to 130000 and now the console will display what I want. But
> clearly I don't really understand what is going on here ........
Simple.  To run a large R job you need both enough time and enough memory.
Similarly there are two resources you need to store and display a large
piece of output in Rgui, lines and storage space.  The console needs both
to store the text and pointers to the beginnings of the lines.  Allowing 
both limits to be altered allows you to allocate your resources optimally.

-- 
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