[ESS] feature request: shell support

[Rainer M Krug]

Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit at gmail.com> writes:

> I have the same pain as your, 

+1

> but shell scripting has nothing to do with statistics. So adding shell
> will most definitely break the "speaks statistics" concept. 

Well - data preparation is part of statistics, and one can use shell
scripts to do this. In addition, I use R a lot as pure scripting
language to execute shell scripts under GRASS. So I would argue shell
scripts are definitely a part of doing statistics.
So it could be argued that it falls under the "speaks statistics" concept.

> Otherwise, it wouldn't be difficult to add.

Then I would suggest to add it. Another option would be (but I don't know
if this is possible, and it seems to go along the lines of what you
mention below) to add it to an additional package which is loaded
on top of ESS and extends it.

>
> Some time ago we discussed about rewriting ESS from scratch. If such a
> thing ever happens, the sub-process handling will be an independent
> module that any scripting language can easily customize for it's own
> needs.

That would be really brilliant.

Cheers,

Rainer

>
>    Vitalie
>
>  >>> Andreas Leha on Wed, 9 Oct 2013 20:18:02 +0200 wrote:
>
>  > Hi all,
>  > I have to do a lot of shell scripting lately and compared to R scripting
>  > in ess, this feels quite uncomfortable.
>
>  > There is essh [fn:1] (*many thanks* to the creator), which I use a
>  > lot right now and which improves the experience quite a bit.
>
>  > Compared to ess (which I only use for R) it lags behind a lot, though.
>
>  > Just a few examples:
>  > - ess improved a lot in handling multiple *R* buffers, where it now
>  >   handles them using the buffer name (instead of *R <2>*).  essh still
>  >   asks for *shell<2>*.
>  > - essh does not remember an associated *shell* buffer.  Instead with
>  >   multiple open *shell* buffers it asks for the one to use with every
>  >   line I sent to the buffer.
>  > - essh (by default) still uses the 'old' C-c C-n eval commands instead
>  >   of ess's new C-RET.
>
>  > Of course these are all fixable in my config or directly in essh.
>
>  > But here is my question to ess: Would it be possible to add that/similar
>  > support for shell into ess?  My hope is: That way, the shell support
>  > would immediately profit from all the ess improvements.
>
>  > I am sure there are more people (e.g. in bioinformatics) who have to
>  > work quite a bit on the command line or shell scripts and are happy
>  > users of ess.  These people (e.g. myself) would *love* to see shell
>  > support in ess.
>
>  > Regards,
>  > Andreas
>
>  > Footnotes:
>
>  > [fn:1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/essh.el
>
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>
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-- 
Rainer M. Krug

email: RMKrug<at>gmail<dot>com