Passing arguments to interactive mode

Question

I need to understand an R script. Since I did not use R until now, I try to understand the script step by step. At the beginning of the script command line arguments (input files) are passed with commandArgs() . I know that one can access additional arguments for an R script with commandArgs() .

But I just cannot figure out how to run a script with arguments in the interactive mode, so that I can print all variables used in the script later on. For example source("script.R") does not seem to take arguments.

My apologies if I am just not capable of using the right search query...

Answer 1

I think you're misunderstanding the use of commandArgs - it's for getting the arguments supplied when run through the command line... not the interpreter. If you just want to "supply arguments" when sourcing a file then just put those into the global namespace (just create the variables you want to use). Using source is almost just like copying the script and pasting it into the interpreter.