radian: A 21 century R console

Important

radian is no longer under active development. While I may address critical or obvious bugs, no new features will be added. If you are looking for an active alternative, I recommend checking out arf by @eitsupi.

radian is an alternative console for the R program with multiline editing and rich syntax highlight. One would consider radian as a ipython clone for R, though its design is more aligned to julia.

Features

• cross platform, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux
• shell mode: hit ; to enter and <backspace> to leave
• reticulate python repl mode: hit ~ to enter
• improved R prompt and reticulate python prompt

• unicode support
• latex completion
• auto matching parens/quotes.
• bracketed paste mode
• emacs/vi editing mode
• automatically adjust to terminal width
• read more than 4096 bytes per line

Installation

Requirements:

• An installation of R (version 3.4.0 or above) is required to use radian, an R installation binary for your system can be downloaded from .
• python (version 3.8 or above) is also required to install radian. If your system doesn't come with a python distribution, it can be downloaded from .
• Installing radian via pipx would be the easiest option.

# install released version
pipx install radian
or the dev version
pipx install git+https://github.com/randy3k/radian
to run radian
radian

Alias on unix system

You could alias r to radian by putting

alias r="radian"

in ~/.bashprofile such that r would open radian_ and R would still open the traditional R console. (R is still useful, e.g, running R CMD BUILD.)

Settings

radian can be customized by specifying the below options in various locations

• $XDGCONFIGHOME/radian/profile or $HOME/.config/radian/profile (Unix)
• %USERPROFILE%/radian/profile (Windows)
• $HOME/.radian_profile (Unix)
• %USERPROFILE%/.radian_profile (Windows)
• .radian_profile in the working directory

• the settings are not persistent when vanilla mode is used;
• it doesn't work well with packrat or renv.

# Do not copy the whole configuration, just specify what you need!
see https://pygments.org/styles
for a list of supported color schemes, default scheme is "native"
options(radian.color_scheme = "native")
either  "emacs" (default) or "vi".
options(radian.editing_mode = "emacs")
enable various emacs bindings in vi insert mode
options(radian.emacsbindingsinviinsert_mode = FALSE)
show vi mode state when radian.editing_mode is vi
options(radian.showvimode_prompt = TRUE)
options(radian.vimodeprompt = "\033[0;34m[{}]\0330m ")
indent continuation lines
turn this off if you want to copy code without the extra indentation;
but it leads to less elegent layout
options(radian.indent_lines = TRUE)
auto match brackets and quotes
options(radian.auto_match = TRUE)
enable the [prompttoolkit auto_suggest feature

this option is experimental and is known to break python prompt, use it with caution
options(radian.auto_suggest = FALSE)
highlight matching bracket
options(radian.highlightmatchingbracket = FALSE)
auto indentation for new line and curly braces
options(radian.auto_indentation = TRUE)
options(radian.tab_size = 4)
pop up completion while typing
options(radian.completewhiletyping = TRUE)
the minimum length of prefix to trigger auto completions
options(radian.completionprefixlength = 2)
timeout in seconds to cancel completion if it takes too long
set it to 0 to disable it
options(radian.completion_timeout = 0.05)
add spaces around equals in function argument completion
options(radian.completionaddingspacesaroundequals = TRUE)
automatically adjust R buffer size based on terminal width
options(radian.auto_width = TRUE)
insert new line between prompts
options(radian.insertnewline = TRUE)
max number of history records
options(radian.history_size = 20000)
where the global history is stored, environmental variables will be expanded
note that "~" is expanded to %USERPROFILE% or %HOME% in Windows
options(radian.globalhistoryfile = "~/.radian_history")
the filename that local history is stored, this file would be used instead of
radian.globalhistoryfile if it exists in the current working directory
options(radian.localhistoryfile = ".radian_history")
when using history search (ctrl-r/ctrl-s in emacs mode), do not show duplicate results
options(radian.historysearchno_duplicates = FALSE)
ignore case in history search
options(radian.historysearchignore_case = FALSE)
do not save debug browser commands such as Q in history
options(radian.historyignorebrowser_commands = TRUE)
custom prompt for different modes
options(radian.prompt = "\033[0;34mr$>\033[0m ")
options(radian.shell_prompt = "\033[0;31m#!>\033[0m ")
options(radian.browse_prompt = "\033[0;33mBrowse[{}]>\033[0m ")
stderr color format
options(radian.stderr_format = "\033[0;31m{}\033[0m")
enable reticulate prompt and trigger ~
options(radian.enablereticulateprompt = TRUE)

# allows user defined shortcuts, these keys should be escaped when send through the terminal.
In the following example, esc + - sends <- and ctrl + right sends %>%.
Note that in some terminals, you could mark alt as escape so you could use alt + - instead.
Also, note that some ctrl mappings are reserved. You cannot remap m, i, h, d, or c
options(
    radian.escapekeymap = list(
        list(key = "-", value = " <- "),
    ),
    radian.ctrlkeymap = list(
        list(key = "right", value = " %>% ")
    )
)

NOTE: Python version was forced by the current process

env R_HOME=/usr/local/lib/R radian

pip install -U setuptools

let R_app = "radian"
let R_cmd = "R"
let Rhlterm = 0
let R_args = []  " if you had set any
let Rbracketedpaste = 1

pip install jedi

conda install -c conda-forge jedi

docker exec -it <container> bash -c "stty cols $COLUMNS rows $LINES && bash"

radian wouldn't be possible without the creative work prompttoolkit by Jonathan Slenders.