WISH: Make it easier to get a clean package version string from command line (CLI)

[HenrikBengtsson]

Issue

$ Rscript -e "packageVersion('future')"
[1] '1.7.0.9000'

$ Rscript -e "as.character(packageVersion('future'))"
[1] "1.7.0.9000"

The solution involves understanding R and now numeric_version objects are print():ed, e.g.

$ Rscript -e "cat(as.character(packageVersion('future')))"
1.7.0.9000

$ Rscript -e "cat(packageDescription('future')[['Version']])"
1.7.0-9000

Suggestion

I don't know what the best solution would be here. Maybe update cat() so the following works:

$ Rscript -e "cat(packageVersion('future'))"
Error in cat(packageVersion("future")) : 
  argument 1 (type 'list') cannot be handled by 'cat'

[gmbecker]

This seems like it would be tough to do. cat is not (AFAIK) a generic (implicit or otherwise) and in general it working on a list doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't seem like having to call as.character on it is that bad...

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 1:49 PM, Henrik Bengtsson [email protected] wrote:

Issue

$ Rscript -e "packageVersion('future')" [1] '1.7.0.9000' $ Rscript -e "as.character(packageVersion('future'))" [1] "1.7.0.9000"

The solution involves understanding R and now numeric_version objects are print():ed, e.g.

$ Rscript -e "cat(as.character(packageVersion('future')))"1.7.0.9000 $ Rscript -e "cat(packageDescription('future')[['Version']])"1.7.0-9000

Suggestion

I don't know what the best solution would be here. Maybe update cat() so the following works:

$ Rscript -e "cat(packageVersion('future'))"Error in cat(packageVersion("future")) : argument 1 (type 'list') cannot be handled by 'cat'

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[HenrikBengtsson]

I added this as an "issue" because it's very noisy for non-R developers, e.g. someone who write a pipeline in bash/Python/Ruby, ... and who needs to query the version of dependent R package.

Maybe print() could behave differently in non-interactive mode/for simple objects. OTH, that'll introduce inconsistent behavior and possible be even more confusing. It's basically the same problem where you cannot easy call R from the CLI for quick calcs etc, i.e.

$ Rscript -e 1+2
[1] 3

This makes it unnecessarily hard using R in pipes / redirects. Maybe there could be an option() to suppress any print() prefix and be able to control this option via a CLI option, e.g.

$ Rscript --simplify -e 1+2
3

$ Rscript -s -e 1+2
3

$ Rscript -se 1+2
3

[gmbecker]

Looks like this is already in there, just super obscure (though it is mentioned in the help for print):

tools::.print.via.format(packageVersion("fastdigest")) 0.6.3