funr

r fun(ction): attempt to make a fun cli for R

A small utility which wraps Rscript and provides easy access to all R functions from the terminal.

>funr

This aims to provide an easy command-line interface to all R functions.

Usage: funr [-h -v] <name of a function> <arguments to the function [<options>=<value>]>

funr -h            Show this help
funr -h <function> Show help for a specific function
funr -v            Show extra verbose messages for debugging this package
funr <func>        Find and run <function>
funr <func> [args] Run <func> with supplied [arguments]
funr <pkg::func>   Load the package <pkg>, and then run <func>

Examples:

Using a base package

## load help for rnorm
funr -h rnorm

    Normal                  package:stats                  R Documentation
    The Normal Distribution
    Description:
       Density, distribution function, quantile function and random

## sample 10 numbers from a normal distribution
funr rnorm n=10
    -1.244571 1.378112 0.02189023 -0.3723951 0.282709 -0.22854 -0.8476185 0.3222024 0.08937781 -0.4985827

Using a non-base package Loading a package automatically by ::

## load help file for knitr
funr -h knitr::knit

    knit                   package:knitr                   R Documentation
    Knit a document
    Description:
       This function takes an input file, extracts the R code in it
       according to a list of patterns, evaluates the code and writes the
       output in another file. It can also tangle R source code from the

Knit a HTML file using a example R markdown input from knitr package:

## get path to an example Rmd file. Assuming we have knitr installed.
## Save the filename in a BASH variable rmd
## Pipes are supported starting version 0.1.2
funr system.file package=knitr fl=examples/knitr-minimal.Rmd | funr knitr::knit2html input=-

    loading pkg: knitr
    processing file: ... knitr/examples/knitr-minimal.Rmd
    output file: knitr-minimal.md
    knitr-minimal.html

Adding funr to your scripts

Create a file (called norm.r), which looks like the following:

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript

# define your functions
norm_hist <- function(n){
  x = rnorm(n)
  
  hist(x)
}

library(funr)
out = funr(commandArgs(trailingOnly = TRUE))

Make sure you have the shebang like with #!/usr/bin/env Rscript, so that shell knows that this is a Rscript. Also, add execution privilige to the script using:

chmod ugo+rx norm.r

Now, one may call the function:

norm.r norm_hist n=100

## OR
Rscript norm.r norm_hist n=100