From my perspective, which is a unix-alike perspective, Rscript makes R useable in exactly the same way as other unix style scripting languages such as perl, tcsh, bash, etc. This is useful, and a good thing. If I remember (and understood) correctly, it is why Rscript was introduced, later in R's history than BATCH.
Scripts run using Rscript can be (slightly) more self-contained, which I suppose might or might not be an advantage, depending on one's needs: To run an R script using Rscript, I type ./myRscript.r at the command line (less typing), whereas with batch mode, it has to be R CMD BATCH myRscript.r (more typing) but if I want any R options applied, such as --no-restore or --no-save, I include them within the script when using Rscript, but have to put them on the command line outside the script when using BATCH. One can actually execute an R command at the shell prompt using Rscript, which can't be done with BATCH: [296]% Rscript -e 3+4 [1] 7 [298]% Rscript -e 'sqrt(2)' [1] 1.414214 If I want to pass custom parameters to the script (script-specific parameters of my own that I put on the command line), the syntax for either supplying them or parsing them might be different. I'm not sure, since I don't do this very often, and never use CMD BATCH. But it would be worth checking. -Don -- Don MacQueen Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 7000 East Ave., L-627 Livermore, CA 94550 925-423-1062 Lab cell 925-724-7509 On 7/25/18, 8:22 AM, "R-help on behalf of Rich Shepard" <r-help-boun...@r-project.org on behalf of rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: On Wed, 25 Jul 2018, Bert Gunter wrote: > "Within R one can use source() to run a batch file of R commands, while R > CMD BATCH and Rscript are run from the command line. Is this correct?" > > Yes. Bert, Thanks for confirming. > I think your query answers your query: You use Rscript when you want to use > R in the command environment, perhaps as part of an analytical pipeline; > and you source an R file when you want to work within R. That's a given. Why would I prefer Rscript over R CMD BATCH, or vice-versa? I did not see much difference between the two in their help files. Regards, Rich ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.