Version:	1.1.0
Title:	Automatically Set the Width Option on Terminal Emulators
OS_type:	unix
Description:	Automatically sets the value of options("width") when the terminal emulator is resized. The functions of this package only work if R is compiled for Unix systems and it is running interactively in a terminal emulator.
License:	GPL-2 | GPL-3 [expanded from: GPL (≥ 2)]
NeedsCompilation:	yes
Packaged:	2025-08-21 10:57:55 UTC; research
Author:	Jakson Aquino [aut], Dominique-Laurent Couturier [aut, cre]
Maintainer:	Dominique-Laurent Couturier <dominique.couturier@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk>
Repository:	CRAN
Date/Publication:	2025-08-27 11:10:02 UTC

Automatically set the value of options("width") when the terminal emulator is resized

Description

This package automatically sets options("width") when using R in terminal windows on OSX primarily (but on Unix-like OSes too) and resizing the terminal (e.g., iTerm2 on OSX). It may be useful if options(setWidthOnResize=TRUE) does not work properly for any reason.

This package should not be used with graphical interfaces such as RStudio, RKward, JGR, Rcmdr, or any other interface that handles R output on its own, or when using R via remote sessions (like via a ssh connection, for example). The functions only work if R runs interactively in a terminal emulator. The terminal emulator may be called by a text editor like Vim, Gedit, Kate, or Geany.

Details

The package will print information on the R Console if its ‘⁠setwidth.verbose⁠’ option was set to a numeric value bigger than zero:

  options(setwidth.verbose = 1) # Print startup message
  options(setwidth.verbose = 2) # Print error message when unable to set width
  options(setwidth.verbose = 3) # Print width value
  

The package does not have any user visible R function. When it is loaded, the SIGWINCH signal starts to be handled by a C function that updates the value of options("width"). The handle will not be activated if interactive() == FALSE or the value of the environment variable ‘⁠TERM⁠’ is either empty or ‘⁠"dumb"⁠’.

To manually test whether the package is working properly on your system you may repeatedly resize the terminal emulator and print a long vector, like 1:300.

To disable the automatic setting of options("width") do:

  detach("package:setwidth", unload = TRUE)
  

Author(s)

Jakson Alves de Aquino and Dominique-Laurent Couturier

See Also

The package colorout colorizes R output when running in a unix/osx terminal emulators.

Examples

options(setwidth.verbose = 1)
print(getOption("width"))