Utility functions for answering R question on StackOverflow • overflow

An R package to assist people answering R questions on Stack Overflow.

Authors: Sebastian Campbell, Ananda Mahto, Julien Barnier, Tyler Rinker, Richard Cotton, Brodie Gaslam

Maintainer: Ananda Mahto

Installation and Usage

The easiest way to install this package is to use install_github:

source("http://news.mrdwab.com/install_github.R")
install_github("mrdwab/overflow-mrdwab")

Once installed, simply use the following to access the functions:

library(overflow)

Functions

Main Functions

Function	Description
`soread`	Reads data directly from the clipboard and creates an object named “mydf” in your workspace.
`soanswer`	Writes a call and its output to the clipboard, already formatted for pasting into an answer at Stack Overflow.
`solast`	Captures the output from `.Last.value` along with the last expression from the history file and formats them in a manner suitable for posting on Stack Overflow.
`sodput`	A modified version of `dput` that copies your data to your clipboard, to be pasted into a question or an answer at Stack Overflow.
`sopkgs`	Temporarily installs a package in the current R session.

Additional Functions

Function	Description
`sotrunc`	Truncate the output of `data.frame`s, matrices, and lists.
`sorandf`	Function to create a random `data.frame`. It’s probably better to just head over to Tyler’s “Wakefield” package rather than use this.

Examples

Examples can be found in the “Examples” section of the relevant helpfile, but essentially, you get the following:

`soread`

## Copy the following text (select and ctrl-c)

# A B
# 1 2
# 3 4
# 5 6

## Now, just type the following to create a data.frame in your workspace

soread()

## Copying tibbles (select from the line after `# A tibble: ...` and ctrl-c)

# A tibble: 3 x 2
      A     B
  <dbl> <dbl>
1     1     5
2     2     3
3     3    11

soread(skipAfterHeader = TRUE, out = "mydf2")

`soanswer`

> soanswer(sin(2 * pi))
    sin(2 * pi)
    ## [1] -2.449294e-16

The output should automatically be copied to your clipboard to be pasted into an answer.

`sodput`

> sodput(mtcars, rows=1:6)
                                                                                  
     mtcars <- structure(list(mpg = c(21, 21, 22.8, 21.4, 18.7, 18.1), cyl = c(6, 
         6, 4, 6, 8, 6), disp = c(160, 160, 108, 258, 360, 225), hp = c(110,      
         110, 93, 110, 175, 105), drat = c(3.9, 3.9, 3.85, 3.08, 3.15,            
         2.76), wt = c(2.62, 2.875, 2.32, 3.215, 3.44, 3.46), qsec = c(16.46,     
         17.02, 18.61, 19.44, 17.02, 20.22), vs = c(0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1),            
             am = c(1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0), gear = c(4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3), carb = c(4,    
             4, 1, 1, 2, 1)), .Names = c("mpg", "cyl", "disp", "hp", "drat",      
         "wt", "qsec", "vs", "am", "gear", "carb"), row.names = c("Mazda RX4",    
         "Mazda RX4 Wag", "Datsun 710", "Hornet 4 Drive", "Hornet Sportabout",    
         "Valiant"), class = "data.frame")

The output should automatically be copied to your clipboard to be pasted into a question or an answer.

Known Limitations

The features to read and write to the clipboard on Linux may be buggy. Be sure you have xclip installed.
When you select data to be used with soread, you must ensure that you fully select the last line; failing to do so would lead to your dataset being truncated by one row.

overflow