littler: A scripting and command-line front-end for GNU R
So What Is It For?
#!/usr/bin/env r ## for use in scripts
other input | r ## for use in pipes
r somefile.R ## for running files
r -e 'expr' ## for evaluating expressions
r --help ## to show a quick synopsisExamples?
Plenty. See the examples vignette for a full set of introductory examples. Also see the examples/ directory for a full 28 example scripts, as well as maybe the older tests directory both of which are installed with the package.
Some scripts I use daily or near daily (in alphabetical order):
build.r ## builds from the current directory
c4c.r ## submits current directory to winbuilder
compAttr.r ## run compileAttributes() for a Rcpp package
dratInstert.r 1.2-3.tar.gz -r /srv ## inserts package into drat repo
install.r abc def ## installs packages abc and def
install.r abc_1.2-3.tar.gz ## installs given tarball
install2.r -l /tmp/lib abc def ## installs abc and def into /tmp/lib
rcc.r abc_1.2-3.tar.gz ## run's R CMD check via Gabor's rcmdcheck
render.r foo.Rmd ## calls rmarkdown::render()
roxy.r ## run roxygenize() for a package (only Rd creation)
update.r ## updates any currently installed packagesInstallation
Version 0.3.0 or later
The package resides on the CRAN network and can be installed via
install.packages("littler")Previous Versions up to 0.2.3
In general, simply running the script bootstrap will
configure and build the executable. Running make install
(possibly as sudo make install) will install the resulting
binary.
On Linux systems, ensure you have the autotools-dev
package (or its equivalent on non-Debian/Ubuntu systems). On OS X, you
may need to run brew install automake autoconf to get all
the tools.
Alternate Naming
On some operating systems such as OS X, r is not
different from R. As this risks confusing the main binary
R for the R system with our smaller scripting frontend
r, we suggest to consider running
configure --program-prefix="l" which this leads to
installation of a binary lr instead of r.
Alternate R Version
As littler uses autoconf its AC_PATH_PROG() macro to
find R, one can simply adjust the PATH when
calling configure (or, rather, bootstrap) to
have another version of R used. For example, on a server with R-devel in
this location, the following builds littler using this R-devel version:
PATH="/usr/local/lib/R-devel/bin/:$PATH" ./bootstrap.
More Information
For more information about littler, please see
(but note that the latter now overlaps with the example vignette).
Authors
Jeff Horner (2006 to 2008) and Dirk Eddelbuettel (since 2006)
License
GPL (>= 2)