The goal of scribe is to provide a detailed argument parser for
Rscript. This package contains no dependencies outside of base and
methods. The core functions utilize ReferenceClasses under the hood.
library(scribe)Install {scribe} from CRAN with:
install.packages("scribe")Alternatively, you can install the development version of {scribe}
GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("jmbarbone/scribe")
You can enter command arguments as a vector to test out the behavior.
Arguments can be added to the scribeCommandArgs class (here as ca).
Default behavior tries to parse objects but additional control can be
taken.
ca <- command_args(c("-a", "1", "-b", "2"))
ca$add_argument("-a")
ca$add_argument("-b")
args <- ca$parse()
str(args$a + args$b)
#> int 3Control
# don't convert numbers
ca <- command_args(c("-a", "1", "-b", "1.0"))
ca$add_argument("-a", convert = as.character)
ca$add_argument("-b", convert = as.character)
ca$parse()
#> $a
#> [1] "1"
#>
#> $b
#> [1] "1.0"
# convert numbers to integers
ca <- command_args(c("verbose", "1", "1.5", "1.9"))
ca$add_argument("verbose", action = "flag")
ca$add_argument("...", convert = as.integer)
ca$parse()
#> $verbose
#> [1] TRUE
#>
#> $...
#> integer(0)
# use functions for more control
ca <- command_args(c("verbose", "12-9-2022", "12-10-2022"))
ca$add_argument("verbose", action = "flag")
ca$add_argument("...", convert = function(i) as.Date(i, "%m-%d-%Y"))
ca$parse()
#> $verbose
#> [1] TRUE
#>
#> $...
#> Date of length 0You’ll probably use {scribe} within small scripts that can be called
from your favorite terminal. The example below uses a function to call
this file, but if it is added to your PATH you’d be able to call it
directly:
r-file -a 1 -b 9lines <- "
#! /usr/bin/env -S Rscript --vanilla
library(scribe)
ca <- scribe::command_args()
ca$add_argument('-a', default = 1)
ca$add_argument('-b', default = 2)
args <- ca$parse()
foo <- function(a, b, ...) {
a + b
}
do.call(foo, args)
"
file <- tempfile()
writeLines(lines, file)
rscript <- function(x, args = character()) {
args <- c("--vanilla", x, args)
res <- system2("Rscript", args, stdout = TRUE)
writeLines(res)
}
rscript(file)
#> [1] 3
rscript(file, "-a 0")
#> [1] 2
rscript(file, "-a 0 -b 10")
#> [1] 10I’ve been using {scribe} for some personal scripts. Below is a short
list of some examples (mostly in my
jmb repo):
- pak: call
{pak}from your terminal - update-r-pkgs: update old R packages
- todos: calls
mark::todos() - fixmes: calls
mark::fixmes()
This isn’t the first package. Most contain other dependencies, some even
in different languages (e.g., python).
{argparse}{optparse}{getopt}{minimist}(CRAN archived){optigrab}{docopt}