Execute R from R

Convenience wrappers for exec_wait and exec_internal that shell out to R itself: R.home("bin/R").

r_wait(
  args = "--vanilla",
  std_out = stdout(),
  std_err = stderr(),
  std_in = NULL
)

r_internal(args = "--vanilla", std_in = NULL, error = TRUE)

r_background(args = "--vanilla", std_out = TRUE, std_err = TRUE, std_in = NULL)

Arguments

args

command line arguments for R

std_out

if and where to direct child process STDOUT. Must be one of TRUE, FALSE, filename, connection object or callback function. See section on Output Streams below for details.

std_err

if and where to direct child process STDERR. Must be one of TRUE, FALSE, filename, connection object or callback function. See section on Output Streams below for details.

std_in

a file to send to stdin, usually an R script (see examples).

error

automatically raise an error if the exit status is non-zero.

Details

This is a simple but robust way to invoke R commands in a separate process. Use the callr package if you need more sophisticated control over (multiple) R process jobs.

See also

Other sys: exec

Examples

# Hello world
r_wait("--version")
#> R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13) -- "Great Square Root"
#> Copyright (C) 2025 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
#> 
#> R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
#> You are welcome to redistribute it under the terms of the
#> GNU General Public License versions 2 or 3.
#> For more information about these matters see
#> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
#> 
#> [1] 0

# Run some code
r_wait(c('--vanilla', '-q', '-e', 'sessionInfo()'))
#> > sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13)
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
#> Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3 
#> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libopenblasp-r0.3.26.so;  LAPACK version 3.12.0
#> 
#> locale:
#>  [1] LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C           LC_TIME=C.UTF-8       
#>  [4] LC_COLLATE=C           LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=C.UTF-8   
#>  [7] LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C              LC_ADDRESS=C          
#> [10] LC_TELEPHONE=C         LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C   
#> 
#> time zone: Etc/UTC
#> tzcode source: system (glibc)
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#> [1] compiler_4.5.1
#> > 
#> [1] 0

# Run a script via stdin
tmp <- tempfile()
writeLines(c("x <- rnorm(100)", "mean(x)"), con = tmp)
r_wait(std_in = tmp)
#> 
#> R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13) -- "Great Square Root"
#> Copyright (C) 2025 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
#> 
#> R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
#> You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
#> Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.
#> 
#> R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
#> Type 'contributors()' for more information and
#> 'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.
#> 
#> Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
#> 'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
#> Type 'q()' to quit R.
#> 
#> > x <- rnorm(100)
#> > mean(x)
#> [1] -0.13552
#> > 
#> [1] 0