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Running R/S-Plus in Emacs

For those running R/S-Plus inUnix or Windows, I highly recommend running R or S-Plus from within emacs. This provides command history and editing, command line completion, and simplifies writing source files, functions, provides transcripts of sessions, etc everything but your laundry...

To get started, place the following lines in your ~/.emacs file or save the following .emacs file in order to get access to ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics). You will need to comment out some of the lines below that are no longer needed in Duke Statistics.

; automatically get the correct mode 
auto-mode-alist (append (list '("\\.c$" . c-mode)
			      '("\\.tex$" . latex-mode)
			      '("\\.S$" . S-mode)
			      '("\\.s$" . S-mode)
			      '("\\.R$" . R-mode)
			      '("\\.r$" . R-mode)
			      '("\\.html$" . html-mode)
                              '("\\.emacs" . emacs-lisp-mode)
	                )
		      auto-mode-alist)
; comment out the following if you are not using R/S-Plus on ACPUB
; add a ";" in front of each line to comment out
(load "/usr/pkg/ess/lisp/ess-site")
(setq-default inferior-S+6-program-name "Splus")
(setq-default inferior-R-program-name "R")

Having done the above, type emacs & to open an emacs window. Ttype M-x R (or S for S-Plus users) and then enter the subdirectory in which you wish to run R/S. (M-x means press the Esc key and then press x)

Commands can be placed in a separate file (this is useful for keeping a record of what you have done so far). Extensions for R mode end in .R or .r by default; for S use .S or .s as a file suffix. (modify auto-amode-alist above for other options.)

Basic ESS commands to get started using R/S-Plus under Emacs ( C-c means press the Ctrl key down and then enter c. )

• Esc-p Previous Command (at command line)
• Esc-n Next Command (at command line)
• C-c C-v Get help on R/S object (enter name in mini-buffer)
• C-c C-d Dump object or function to a Emacs buffer for editing
• C-c C-l Load file from buffer into S/R
• C-c C-f submit a Function in current buffer to S/R (just have cursor in function body)
• C-c C-j submit the current line in buffer to S/R
• C-c C-r submit the highlignted or marked region to S/R
• C-c TAB complete object/file name
• C-h m for help on ESS mode
• More help is available under the iESS menu in emacs:
  • about (Emacs Info system for on-line help for ESS)
  • describe (for Control/Escape sequences and definitions for ESS)

R/Splus under windows can also be run under Emacs. Please see your local friendly system administrator if you wish to try to set this up on your own computer.