Dear Simon Thanks so much for explaining it all to me. Yes, I was running your GUI. i tried the command line interface to R, and, as you promised, it all worked perfectly. I had found the situation very puzzling. It also seems that R-help subscribers were, after all, right in directing me to this list. I now have a much better understanding of what is going on. Best wishes David
On 14 Aug 2013, at 16:57, Simon Urbanek wrote: > David, > > On Aug 14, 2013, at 10:37 AM, David Epstein wrote: > >> Thanks for your email, which was sufficient to point me to my error. >> >> Before your email, I had thought that if the file did not exist, then the >> "edit" command would create the file, since this is what happens when using >> editor programs under Unix. But in R is not correct, at least on my >> combination of OS and R. >> >> So I first separately created a file called "nam.R" and then tried >> vi(file="nam.R"). >> At this point R opened a new window with an editor that controlled the >> window and enabled one to edit "nam.R", but the editor wasn't vi and it >> wasn't vim. Maybe it was some standard editor provided with R. >> My problem is therefore half solved. I cannot see how to invoke a true vim >> or vi that cooperates directly with R. >> Do other Mac users experience the same feature? >> > > I suspect that you're running the R Mac GUI (you didn't say). In that case, > you're not on a shell, so obviously you cannot use shell programs like vi. If > your editor is a proper OS X app (and not just a command line tool), you can > set it to be the default editor in the preferences of the GUI. > > However, given the reference to other unix platforms above, my guess would be > that you really intended to use the command-line version of R (by typing "R" > in the shell) - there all the regular unix rules apply. > > Cheers, > Simon > > >> I would be interested to know what happens on non-Mac Unix, Linux or Windows >> platforms, if anyone can spare the time and has the hardware to try it. Some >> R-help subscribers seem to regard it as axiomatic that no problem with R on >> a Mac can occur on other platforms, and I have been strongly re-directed to >> this list. Now perhaps I'll find out that this particular question is also >> not appropriate for R-SIG-MAC. >> >> Thanks for any help. >> David >> >> >> On 13 Aug 2013, at 15:45, Brandon Hurr wrote: >> >>> If I had to guess it would be that your file isn't in the working >>> directory. If you supply the entire file location does it work as expected? >>> >>> HTH >>> B >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM, David Epstein >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I tried using various versions of the 'edit' command. Here is an account of >>> how this failed. I hope I have included all relevant information. >>> >>> I haven't used R for a couple of years. Before restarting with R, I >>> downloaded the latest version I could find in its binary version, and >>> installed it without any problems. >>> Mac Os X Finder command "About R" responds with >>> R 3.0.1 GUI 1.61 Snow Leopard build (6492) >>> >>> From inside R >>>> version >>> >>>> platform x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 >>>> arch x86_64 >>>> os darwin10.8.0 #(However, my os is in fact 10.6.8) >>>> system x86_64, darwin10.8.0 >>>> status >>>> major 3 >>>> minor 0.1 >>>> year 2013 >>>> month 05 >>>> day 16 >>>> svn rev 62743 >>>> language R >>>> version.string R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16) >>>> nickname Good Sport >>>> >>>> edit(file='2.9.R') >>>> Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection >>>> In addition: Warning message: >>>> In file(con, "r") : cannot open file '2.9.R': No such file or directory >>>> >>>> getOption('editor') >>> [1] "vi" >>> >>>> edit(file='2.9.R',editor='/opt/local/bin/vim') >>>> Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection >>>> In addition: Warning message: >>>> In file(con, "r") : cannot open file '2.9.R': No such file or directory >>>> >>>> vi(file='try') >>>> Error in file(con, "r") : cannot open the connection >>>> In addition: Warning message: >>>> In file(con, "r") : cannot open file 'try': No such file or directory >>>> >>> And here is my interaction with tcsh (my default shell) >>> H2:~% echo $VISUAL >>> /opt/local/bin/vim >>> H2:~% echo $EDITOR >>> /opt/local/bin/vim >>> H2:~% which vi >>> vi: aliased to /opt/local/bin/vim >>> H2:~/<4>Chap2% ls -ld >>> drwxr-xr-x 11 dbae dbae 374 8 Aug 10:54 ./ >>> >>> >>> What am I doing wrong? >>> Thanks for any help. >>> David >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac >> >> > > _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
