Question

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Why and where are \n newline characters getting introduced to c()?

I am running R (version 2.15.1) in a bash shell (version 4.2.36(1)) in the GNOME terminal (version 3.4.1.1). Sometimes I write my code in a text file and then paste it directly into the console (when running R). I didn’t have any problems until the scripts I was pasting grew in length. Now, it appears that any code greater than 4206 characters (including \n) is rejected (i.e., the first 4206 characters are accepted and the remaining code is truncated; the truncation is accompanied by the terminal “bell” sound). This character limit is not specific to bash or GNOME terminal because I do not observe a character limit when pasting into e.g., vi. Therefore, I suspect that the character limit is imposed by R, but do not know how to change it, assuming it is a user-configurable parameter. Can the paste limit be changed and if so, what parameter governs it?

Answer 1

It looks like you’re running into a known limitation of the console. As it says in Section 1.8 – R commands, case sensitivity, etc. of An Introduction to R:

Command lines entered at the console are limited[3] to about 4095 bytes (not characters).

[3] some of the consoles will not allow you to enter more, and amongst those which do some will silently discard the excess and some will use it as the start of the next line.

Either put the command in a file and source it, or break the code into multiple lines by inserting your own newlines at appropriate points (between commas).

The value is hard-coded in src/include/Defn.h : #define CONSOLE_BUFFER_SIZE 4096, so you would need to recompile R to change it.