How to disable “Save workspace image?” prompt in R?

Question

When I exit the interactive R shell, it displays an annoying prompt every time:

>
>
Save workspace image? [y/n/c]: n

I\'m always answering \"no\" to it

Answer 1

You can pass the --no-save command line argument when you start R, or you can override the q function:

utils::assignInNamespace(
  "q", 
  function(save = "no", status = 0, runLast = TRUE) 
  {
    .Internal(quit(save, status, runLast))
  }, 
  "base"
)

Put the above code in your .Rprofile so it will be run on startup for every session.

Answer 2

Get the best of both strategies given by users 1 and 2:

Default to not save by adding the following line to your ~/.bashrc:

alias R='R --no-save'

But give yourself an easy way to save on exit by adding this to ~/.Rprofile:

qs <- function(save="yes") { q(save=save)}

So now q() will quit without saving or prompting but qs() will save and quit (also without prompting)

Answer 3

Haven't found the easiest Linux solution yet :)

On ubuntu add the following line to your ~/.bashrc:

alias R='R --no-save'

Every time you start the R console with R, it will be passed the --no-save option.

Answer 4

You can escape the "Save workspace image?" prompt with a Ctrl+D.

Thus, if you do Ctrl+D twice in interactive R, then you exit R without saving your workspace.

(Tested on Linux and OS X)

Answer 5

If, like me, typing out a whole pair of brackets seems like too much effort to exit the repl you can try this:

exit <- structure(list(), class = "exit_command")

print.exit_command <- function(...) {
  q("no")  # exit without saving
}

This creates a new class, which causes R to exit when attempting to print said class. The upshot being that if you run exit in the R repl, the whole thing will exit (because it tries to print it).

NB: You can add it to ~/.Rprofile to load at the start of every session.

Answer 6

You could easily add a qq() function to the .Rprofile file

 qq <- function(save="no") { q(save=save)}

I thought that the save option was available with options, but apparently Joshua's answer is best.