From maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch  Sat Sep  3 13:56:03 2005
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch (Martin Maechler)
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 13:56:03 +0200
Subject: [Rd] R CMD BATCH on scripts without trailing newline
In-Reply-To: <17174.59528.327720.694835@stat.math.ethz.ch>
References: <17174.57691.868797.92193@notch.amtp.cam.ac.uk>
	<17174.59528.327720.694835@stat.math.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <17177.36691.745673.940837@stat.math.ethz.ch>

>>>>> "MM" == Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
>>>>>     on Thu, 1 Sep 2005 13:39:52 +0200 writes:

>>>>> "StEgl" == Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk>
>>>>>     on Thu, 1 Sep 2005 12:09:15 +0100 writes:

    StEgl> If the last line of an R script does not have a
    StEgl> trailing newline, a small errror is produced at the
    StEgl> end of the script.

    StEgl> Small example.  If file eg.r contains one line:
    StEgl> getwd() and there is no newline after the closing
    StEgl> paren

    StEgl> $ R CMD BATCH eg.r

    StEgl> produces an error: $ cat eg.r.Rout

    StEgl> R : Copyright 2005, The R Foundation for Statistical
    StEgl> Computing Version 2.1.1 Patched (2005-09-01), ISBN
    StEgl> 3-900051-07-0

    StEgl> ...

    >>> getwd()proc.time()
    StEgl> Error: syntax error Execution halted $

    MM> aahh, now I finally understand via some people append
    MM> those **ugly** unneeded ';' to the end of almost every
    MM> line of R code.  It would have helped here :-) :-)

    StEgl> Is it worth changing the BATCH script so that it adds
    StEgl> a newline before adding the call to proc.time()?

    MM> Yes I think it would be.  This is trivial, at least for
    MM> <Rsrc>/src/scripts/BATCH Slightly better but more
    MM> tricky: only append a newline "when needed".  Any idea
    MM> for that?

It's probably not worth the extra effort (I agree with Jan on
*that); I've added the obvious to the BATCH script used on
unix-alike platforms, now adding a newline before 'proc.time()'
unconditionally.  I hope people can live with an extra byte in
the output files.

Martin

> BTW: The windows version of "R CMD BATCH" is actually
    MM> *documented* do to work with files that don't end in
    MM> newline.



[Rd] R CMD BATCH on scripts without trailing newline
Martin Maechler