Togaware DATA MINING
Desktop Survival Guide
by Graham Williams
Google

System Parameters

At times you may need or want to know about the machine on which you are running. The R Rvariable[].Platform variable will give information about the system, and can be used, for example, to conditionally run code depending on which operating system you are on.

> .Platform
$OS.type
[1] "unix"

$file.sep
[1] "/"

\$dynlib.ext
[1] ".so"

$GUI
[1] "X11"

$endian
[1] "little"

$pkgType
[1] "source"

> if (.Platform$OS.type == "unix") system("ls")

There are other variables, but Rvariable[].Platform is the recommended variable to use for programming. The variable Rvariable[]version also lists information about the version of R you are running.

> version
         _
platform i486-pc-linux-gnu
arch     i486
os       linux-gnu
system   i486, linux-gnu
status   beta
major    2
minor    2.0
year     2005
month    09
day      28
svn rev  35702
language R

> if (version$os == "linux-gnu") system("ls")
> if (version$os == "mingw32") system("dir")

For a summary of the current R session the sessionInfo function is useful:

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.4.1 (2006-12-18)
i486-pc-linux-gnu

locale:
LC_CTYPE=en_AU;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_AU;LC_COLLATE=en_AU;
LC_MONETARY=en_AU;LC_MESSAGES=en_AU;LC_PAPER=en_AU;LC_NAME=C;
LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_AU;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"  "methods"
[7] "base"

other attached packages:
       ROCR      gplots       gdata      gtools         ada       rpart
    "1.0-1"     "2.3.2"     "2.3.1"     "2.3.0"     "2.0-1"    "3.1-34"
    ellipse      rggobi        mice        nnet        MASS       Hmisc
    "0.3-2"   "2.1.4-4"      "1.15"    "7.2-31"    "7.2-31"     "3.2-1"
      RGtk2      rattle rcompletion
    "2.8.7"   "2.1.123"    "0.0-12"

Yet another source of system information is Sys.info which includes machine name and type, operating system name and version, and username.

> Sys.info()
                             sysname                              release
                             "Linux"                   "2.6.12-1-686-smp"
                             version                             nodename
"#1 SMP Tue Sep 6 15:52:07 UTC 2005"                             "athene"
                             machine                                login
                              "i686"                                "gjw"
                                user
                               "gjw"

> if (Sys.info()["sysname"] == "Linux") system("ls")

Information about various limits of the machine (including things like maximum integer) is obtained from the Rvariable[].Machine variable.

> .Machine
\$double.eps
[1] 2.220446e-16

$double.neg.eps
[1] 1.110223e-16

[...]

$integer.max
[1] 2147483647

$sizeof.long
[1] 4

$sizeof.longlong
[1] 8

$sizeof.longdouble
[1] 12

$sizeof.pointer
[1] 4

A call to capabilities will list optional features that have been compiled into your version of R:

> capabilities()
    jpeg      png    tcltk      X11 http/ftp  sockets   libxml     fifo
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE     TRUE
  cledit    iconv      NLS
    TRUE     TRUE     TRUE

The options function in R allows numerous characteristics of the running R session to be tuned. The options function without arguments returns a list of options and their values. Use getOption to get a specific option value, and options itself to set values. Options that can be set include the prompt string (Roption[]prompt and continuation prompt (Roption[]continue), the terminal width (Roption[]width), number of digits to show when printing (Roption[]digits, and many more. In this example we list some of the options then change Roption[]width, storing its old value, evaluate some other functions, then restore the original value:

> options()
$OutDec
[1] "."

$X11colortype
[1] "true"

[...]

$verbose
[1] FALSE

$warn
[1] 0

$warnings.length
[1] 1000

$width
[1] 80

> getOption("width")
[1] 80
>ow <- options(width=120)
[...]
> options(ow)

Other useful functions include:

> R.home()		# Location of R installation: /usr/lib/R
> Sys.sleep(5)		# Sleep for 5 seconds.
> proc.time()           # shows how much time is currently consumed
> Rprof("Rprof.out")    # Profile the execution of R expressions
> system.time([...])	# Execute a command and report the time taken
> on.exit([...])        # Execute commands on exit or interruption
> username <- as.vector(Sys.info()["login"])

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