R: Read R Code from a File or a Connection

source {base}

R Documentation

Read R Code from a File or a Connection

Description

source causes R to accept its input from the named file or URL (the name must be quoted) or connection. Input is read and parsed by from that file until the end of the file is reached, then the parsed expressions are evaluated sequentially in the chosen environment.

Usage

source(file, local = FALSE, echo = verbose, print.eval = echo,
       verbose = getOption("verbose"),
       prompt.echo = getOption("prompt"),
       max.deparse.length = 150, chdir = FALSE,
       encoding = getOption("encoding"),
       continue.echo = getOption("continue"),
       skip.echo = 0)

Arguments

file

a connection or a character string giving the pathname of the file or URL to read from.

local

if local is FALSE, the statements scanned are evaluated in the user's workspace (the global environment), otherwise in the environment calling source.

echo

logical; if TRUE, each expression is printed after parsing, before evaluation.

print.eval

logical; if TRUE, the result of eval(i) is printed for each expression i; defaults to echo.

verbose

if TRUE, more diagnostics (than just echo = TRUE) are printed during parsing and evaluation of input, including extra info for each expression.

prompt.echo

character; gives the prompt to be used if echo = TRUE.

max.deparse.length

integer; is used only if echo is TRUE and gives the maximal length of the “echo” of a single expression.

chdir

logical; if TRUE and file is a pathname, the R working directory is temporarily changed to the directory containing file for evaluating.

encoding

character string. The encoding to be assumed when file is a character string: see file. A possible value is "unknown": see the Details.

continue.echo

character; gives the prompt to use on continuation lines if echo = TRUE.

skip.echo

integer; how many comment lines at the start of the file to skip if echo = TRUE.

Details

All versions of R accept input from a connection with end of line marked by LF (as used on Unix), CRLF (as used on DOS/Windows) or CR (as used on classic MacOS). The final line can be incomplete, that is missing the final EOL marker.

If options("keep.source") is true (the default), the source of functions is kept so they can be listed exactly as input. This imposes a limit of 128K bytes on the function size and a nesting limit of 265. Use option(keep.source = FALSE) when these limits might take effect: if exceeded they generate an error.

This paragraph applies if file is a filename (rather than a connection). If encoding = "unknown", an attempt is made to guess the encoding. The result of localeToCharset() is used a guide. If encoding has two or more elements, they are tried in turn until the file/URL can be read without error in the trial encoding.

Unlike input from a console, lines in the file or on a connection can contain an unlimited number of characters. However, there is a limit of 8192 bytes on the size of character strings.

When skip.echo > 0, that many comment lines at the start of the file will not be echoed. This does not affect the execution of the code at all. If there are executable lines within the first skip.echo lines, echoing will start with the first of them.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth \& Brooks/Cole.

Examples

## If you want to source() a bunch of files, something like
## the following may be useful:
 sourceDir <- function(path, trace = TRUE, ...) {
    for (nm in list.files(path, pattern = "\\.[RrSsQq]$")) {
       if(trace) cat(nm,":")           
       source(file.path(path, nm), ...)
       if(trace) cat("\n")
    }
 }

[Package base version 2.5.0 ]