Stop Jenny committing arson

This image has been edited. With apologies.

tl;dr

Make RStudio restart itself. Perpetually.

Note

This post contains April Fools’ Day content.

Passing the torch

Jenny Bryan once said:

If the first line of your R script is rm(list = ls()) I will come into your office and SET YOUR COMPUTER ON FIRE 🔥.

The objects in your R environment are wicked little imps whose only motivation is to deceive you. They must be destroyed. Frequently.

But rm(list = ls()) isn’t enough to start a new session with a completely clean slate. It doesn’t detach packages, for example. Reproducibility is at stake here, folks!

The only salvation is to completely restart R. All the time.

I don’t think you heard me. Come closer. I said all the time.

An extinguisher

I’ve been woke to this thought technology for a while. You’re right, it’s time I gave back to the community.

I can’t trust you to restart R voluntarily, so I must help you to help yourself.

So, I have for you a gift. A precious snippet of R code that came to me in a fever dream.

setHook(
  "rstudio.sessionInit",
  function(...) {
    message("⏳ Restarting in 30 seconds...")
    Sys.sleep(30)
    rstudioapi::executeCommand("restartR")
  }
)

Simply open your .Rprofile¹ (a special file that’s executed at start up) with usethis::edit_r_profile()², paste in the code³ and then restart R for it to take effect⁴.

What does it do? It waits for RStudio to start up⁵ and then restarts R⁶ after 30 seconds⁷.

…Which prompts another restart after 30 more seconds.

…And another.

…Forever⁸.

trapped in a loop help I’m

I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t this block the console? Kind of. You can still type stuff and it’ll be executed before the next restart. Only to disappear immediately.

Complete panic. Just like Jenny wanted! I think?

Rise from the ashes

How can you thank me for this? I am humble (extremely), but you’re welcome to support my Patreon.

Happy March 32nd, colleagues.

Environment

Session info

Last rendered: 2024-04-03 08:14:51 BST

R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Ventura 13.2.1

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-arm64/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib 
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.11.0

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

time zone: Europe/London
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] htmlwidgets_1.6.2 compiler_4.3.1    fastmap_1.1.1     cli_3.6.2        
 [5] tools_4.3.1       htmltools_0.5.8   rstudioapi_0.16.0 yaml_2.3.8       
 [9] rmarkdown_2.26    knitr_1.45        jsonlite_1.8.8    xfun_0.43        
[13] digest_0.6.35     rlang_1.1.3       fontawesome_0.5.2 evaluate_0.23    

Footnotes

1. Don’t.

2. Don’t.

3. Don’t.

4. Fine, dew it.

5. The code depends on the {rstudioapi} package, but it needs to load before it can be used. This seems to happen after the .Rprofile has been read. This is why we have to use setHook() with rstudio.sessionInit so the restart command can be executed once RStudio has initiated.

6. I also tried rsudioapi::restartSession() and .rs.restartR() here, but they didn’t work quite as I expected. Let me know any non-RStudio ways to do this, of course.

7. If you’re feeling extra spicy, maybe randomise the wait period!

8. Maybe you’ll have to force quit RStudio? Use Cmd+Option+Esc on a Macintosh or Ctrl+Alt+Delete on Michaelsoft Binbows. I assume Linux users know what they’re doing.

Reuse