Split code over multiple lines in an R script

Question

I want to split a line in an R script over multiple lines  because it is too long   How do I do that   Specifically  I have a line such as  setwd    a very long path here that goes beyond 80 characters and then some more     Is it possible to split the long path over multiple lines  I tried  setwd    a very long path here that goes beyond 80 characters and  then some more     with return key at the end of the first line  but that does not work   Thanks

User · Answer

I know this post is old  but I had a Situation like this and just want to share my solution  All the answers above work fine  But if you have a Code such as those in data table chaining Syntax it becomes abit challenging  e g  I had a Problem like this   mass  lt - files   Veg  tstrsplit files file       1 4   1      Rain  tstrsplit files file       1 4   2      Roughness  tstrsplit files file       1 4   3      Geom  tstrsplit files file       1 4   4    time  s  lt  12000   I tried most of the suggestions above and they didn  t work  but I figured out that they can be split after the comma within     Splitting at    doesn  t work   mass  lt - files   Veg  tstrsplit files file       1 4   1           Rain  tstrsplit files file       1 4   2           Roughness  tstrsplit files file       1 4   3           Geom  tstrsplit files file       1 4   4     time  s   lt  12000

User · Answer

This will keep the  n character  but you can also just wrap the quote in parentheses  Especially useful in RMarkdown  t  lt -   quot  this is a long string  quot

User · Answer

For that particular case there is file path    File  lt - file path          a       very       long      path      here      that      goes      beyond      80      characters      and      then      some      more   setwd File

User · Answer

Bah  comments are too small  Anyway   Dirk is very right   R doesn t need to be told the code starts at the next line  It is smarter than Python  -  and will just continue to read the next line whenever it considers the statement as  not finished   Actually  in your case it also went to the next line  but R takes the return as a character when it is placed between      Mind you  you ll have to make sure your code isn t finished  Compare  a  lt - 1   2   3   with   a  lt - 1   2   3   So  when spreading code over multiple lines  you have to make sure that R knows something is coming  either by     leaving a bracket open  or ending the line with an operator   When we re talking strings  this still works but you need to be a bit careful  You can open the quotation marks and R will read on until you close it  But every character  including the newline  will be seen as part of the string    x  lt -  This is a very long string over two lines   x     1   This is a very nlong string over two lines   cat x     This is a very    long string over two lines    That s the reason why in this case  your code didn t work  a path can t contain a newline character   n   So that s also why you better use the solution with paste   or paste0   Dirk proposed

User · Answer

You are not breaking code over multiple lines  but rather a single identifier  There is a difference   For your issue  try  R gt  setwd paste    a very long path here                    and then some more                    and then some more                    and then some more   sep        which also illustrates that it is perfectly fine to break code across multiple lines

User · Answer

Dirk s method above will absolutely work  but if you re looking for a way to bring in a long string where whitespace structure is important to preserve  example  a SQL query using RODBC  there is a two step solution   1  Bring the text string in across multiple lines  long string  lt -  this is  a  long string with whitespace    2  R will introduce a bunch of  n characters   Strip those out with strwrap    which destroys whitespace  per the documentation   strwrap long string  width 10000  simplify TRUE    By telling strwrap to wrap your text to a very  very long row  you get a single character vector with no whitespace newline characters

[r] Split code over multiple lines in an R script

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