radian 0.4.1

A 21 century R console

radian: A 21 century R console

radian is an alternative console for the R program with multiline editing and rich syntax highlight. One would consider radian as a ipython clone for R, though its design is more aligned to julia.

Features

• cross platform, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux
• shell mode: hit ; to enter and <backspace> to leave
• reticulate python repl mode: hit ~ to enter
• improved R prompt and reticulate python prompt
  • multiline editing
  • syntax highlight
  • auto completion (reticulate autocompletion depends on jedi)
• unicode support
• auto matching parens/quotes.
• brackated paste mode
• emacs/vi editing mode
• automiatically adjust to terminal width
• read more than 4096 bytes per line

Installation

Requirements:

• An installation of R (version 3.4.0 or above) is required to use radian, an R installation binary for your system can be downloaded from https://cran.r-project.org.
• python is also required to install radian. If your system doesn't come with a python distribution, it can be downloaded from https://conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html. Both version 2 and version 3 should work, though python 3 is recommended.
• pip is optional but it makes the installation a bit easier.

# install released version
pip install -U radian
# to run radian
radian

# or the development version
pip install -U git+https://github.com/randy3k/radian

Alias on unix system

You could alias r to radian by putting

alias r="radian"

in ~/.bash_profile such that r would open radian and R would still open the traditional R console. (R is still useful, e.g, running R CMD BUILD.)

Settings

radian can be customized by specifying the following options in .Rprofile at your user home directory. However, when running radian in vanilla mode (radian --vanilla), the file .Rprofile would not be executed. If persistent settings are required, one could put those options in .radian_profile. This file will be executed even if radian is in vanilla mode.

Do not copy the whole configuration, just specify what you need!

# see https://help.farbox.com/pygments.html
# for a list of supported color schemes, default scheme is "native"
options(radian.color_scheme = "native")

# either  `"emacs"` (default) or `"vi"`.
options(radian.editing_mode = "emacs")

# indent continuation lines
# turn this off if you want to copy code without the extra indentation;
# but it leads to less elegent layout
options(radian.indent_lines = TRUE)

# auto match brackets and quotes
options(radian.auto_match = FALSE)

# auto indentation for new line and curly braces
options(radian.auto_indentation = TRUE)
options(radian.tab_size = 4)

# pop up completion while typing
options(radian.complete_while_typing = TRUE)
# timeout in seconds to cancel completion if it takes too long
# set it to 0 to disable it
options(radian.completion_timeout = 0.05)

# automatically adjust R buffer size based on terminal width
options(radian.auto_width = TRUE)

# insert new line between prompts, turning it off may hide buffered lines
options(radian.insert_new_line = TRUE)

# when using history search (ctrl-r/ctrl-s in emacs mode), do not show duplicate results
options(radian.history_search_no_duplicates = FALSE)

# custom prompt for different modes
options(radian.prompt = "\033[0;34mr$>\033[0m ")
options(radian.shell_prompt = "\033[0;31m#!>\033[0m ")
options(radian.browse_prompt = "\033[0;33mBrowse[{}]>\033[0m ")

# show vi mode state when radian.editing_mode is `vi`
options(radian.show_vi_mode_prompt = TRUE)
options(radian.vi_mode_prompt = "\033[34m[{}]\033[0m ")

# stderr color format
options(radian.stderr_format = "\033[0;31m{}\033[0m")

# suppress the loading message for reticulate
options(radian.suppress_reticulate_message = FALSE)
# enable reticulate prompt and trigger `~`
options(radian.enable_reticulate_prompt = TRUE)

Custom key bindings

# allows user defined shortcuts, these keys should be escaped when send through the terminal.
# In the following example, `esc` + `-` sends `<-` and `esc` + `m` sends `%>%`.
# Note that in some terminals, you could mark `alt` as `escape` so you could use `alt` + `-` instead.
options(radian.escape_key_map = list(
    list(key = "-", value = " <- "),
    list(key = "m", value = " %>% ")
))

FAQ

How to specify R_HOME location

If radian cannot locate the installation of R automatically. The best option is to expose the R binary to the system PATH variable.

In Linux/macOS, you could also export the environment variable R_HOME. For example,

$ export R_HOME=/usr/local/lib/R
$ radian

Please also make sure that R was installed with the R shared library libR.so or libR.dylib or libR.dll. On Linux, the flag --enable-R-shlib may be needed to install R from the source.

how to use local history file

radian maintains its own history file .radian_history and doesn't use the .Rhistory file. A local .radian_history is used if it is found in the launching directory. Otherwise, the global history file ~/.radian_history would be used. To override the default behavior, you could launch radian with the options: radian --local-history, radian --global-history or radian --no-history.

Does it slow down my R program?

radian only provides a frontend to the R program, the actual running eventloop is the same as that of the traditional R console. There is no performance sacrifice (or gain) while using this modern command line interface.

Nvim-R support

Put

let R_app = "radian"
let R_cmd = "R"
let R_hl_term = 0
let R_args = []  " if you had set any
let R_bracketed_paste = 1

in your vim config.

reticulate Auto Completions

To enable reticulate prompt completions, make sure that jedi is installed.

pip install jedi

Readline Error

libreadline.so.6: undefined symbol: PC

It may occurr if python and R use different two versions of libreadline. You could try preloading a version of libreadline.so first, e.g.,

env LD_PRELOAD=/lib64/libreadline.so.6 radian

setTimeLimit not working

radian utilizes the function setTimeLimit to set timeout for long completion. Users may notice that setTimeLimit is not working under the global environment. A workaround is to put the code inside a block or a function,

{
    setTimeLimit(1)
    while(1) {}
    setTimeLimit()
}

Prompt not shown inside a docker container

It maybe caused by the invalid terminal size, try running stty size in your terminal to see if it returns a correct size. You could change the values of it from the environmental variables $COLUMNS and $LINES when you log-in the docker container.

docker exec -it <container> bash -c "stty cols $COLUMNS rows $LINES && bash"

Why called radian?

radian is powered by (π)thon.

Credits

radian wouldn't be possible without the creative work prompt_toolkit by Jonathan Slenders.