R.exe, Rcmd.exe, Rscript.exe and Rterm.exe: what's the difference?

RExecutableRguiRterm

R Problem Overview


I'm struggling with the different R executables. What is the difference between R.exe (with or without CMD BATCH option), Rcmd.exe, Rscript.exe and Rterm.exe when running command line in a batch file?

And what is the difference between:

R.exe --no-environ --no-save < "c:\temp\R\test.R" > "c:\temp\R\out.txt" 2>&1

and

R.exe CMD BATCH --no-environ --no-save "c:\temp\R\test.R" "c:\temp\R\out.txt"

No difference in the output.

I cannot find anything about Rcmd.exe and Rscript.exe in the 3079 pages R reference manual.

By the way: I am using Windows.

R Solutions


Solution 1 - R

Caveat: I work much more on Linux than Windows:

  • Rcmd.exe is a historical left-over as back in the day, you could not do R CMD something on Windows but needed the special executable Rcmd.exe something. That is no longer the case, yet it is provided for backwards compatibility.
  • Rterm.exe is also a holdover from the days when Rcmd.exe was used. Can be ignored these days.
  • R CMD BATCH is a crutch that was needed in the days before littler and Rscript.exe, and similarly lingering from old docs and habits..
  • Rscript.exe is your friend for batch scripts; use it.
  • For everything else, there's R.exe.

Other than that, as Marek hinted, the reference manual is the wrong one among the six available manuals. Try the Introduction to R and the Installation and Admin manuals both of which have specific appendices for Windows.

Attributions

All content for this solution is sourced from the original question on Stackoverflow.

The content on this page is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionwaandersView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - RDirk EddelbuettelView Answer on Stackoverflow