Some additional comments that might be relevant to people interested in these topics.
1. For R scripts you should also consider the package littler developed by Dirk Eddelbuettel, Highly recommended. For info http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/littler.html or the github repository. 2. Scripts can be useful both for short calculations, extending the shell, or for large R jobs that are not interactive and can run unsupervised. e.g. I have a script that is run automatically on a daily schedule. It performs a number of calculations and updates a database with the results. 3. When creating a large-ish R project that will run as a script, I still break the task into smaller tasks which are implemented as R scripts which are source()'ed into the batch job. The smaller R scripts are usually developed and debugged in an interactive environment, such as RStudio. Best, Eric On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 7:36 PM, MacQueen, Don via R-help < r-help@r-project.org> wrote: > 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. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.
