Knitr：spin - 如何添加文本而无需手动添加＃'每一行？

Question

My understanding is that knitr:spin allows me to work on my plain, vanilla, regular ol' good R script, while keeping the ability to generate a full document that understands markdown syntax. (see https://yihui.name/knitr/demo/stitch/ )

Indeed, the rmarkdown feature in Rstudio , while super neat, is actually really a hassle because

• I need to duplicate my code and break it in chunks which is super boring + inefficient as it is hard to keep track of code changes.
• On top of that rmarkdown cannot read my current workspace. This is somehow surprising but it is what it is.

All in all this is very constraining... See here for a related discussion Is there a way to knitr markdown straight out of your workspace using RStudio? .

As discussed here ( http://deanattali.com/2015/03/24/knitrs-best-hidden-gem-spin/ ), spin seems to be the solution.

Indeed, knitr:spin syntax looks like the following:

#' This is a special R script which can be used to generate a report. You can
#' write normal text in roxygen comments.
#'
#' First we set up some options (you do not have to do this):

#+ setup, include=FALSE
library(knitr)

in a regular workspace!

BUT note how each line of text is preceded by #' .

My problem here is that it is also very inefficient to add #' after each single line of text. Is there a way to do so automatically?

Say I select a whole chunk of text and rstudio adds this #' every row? Maybe in the same spirit as commenting a whole chunk of code lines?

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In RStudio v 1.1.28, starting a line with #' causes the next line to start with #' when I hit enter in a *.R file on my machine (Ubuntu Linux 16.04LTS).

So as long as you start a text chunk with it, it will continue. But for previously existing R scripts, it looks like you would have to use find -> replace , or write a function to modify the required file, this worked for me in a very simple test.

comment_replace <- function(in_file, out_file = in_file){
  in_text <- scan(file = in_file, what = character(), sep = "\n")
  out_text <- gsub("^# ", "#' ", in_text)
  cat(out_text, sep = "\n", file = out_file)
}

I would note, that this function does not check for preexisting #' , you would want to build that in. I modified it so that it shouldn't replace them too much by adding a space in the regular expression.

Answer 2

With an RMarkdown document, you would write something like this:

As you can see I have some fancy code below, and text right here.

```{r setup}
# R code here
library(ggplot2)
```

And I have more text here...

This gist offers a quick introduction to RMarkdown and knitr 's features. I think you don't entirely understand what RMarkdown really is, it's a markdown document with R sprinkled in between, not (as you said) an R script with markdown sprinkled in between.

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Edit: For those who are downvoting, please read the comments below this... OP didn't specify he was using spin earlier.