Disable saving history

Question

Is it possible to disable saving command history / session in R by default ? I really hate those .RData and .RHistory files !!

Answer 1

If you are using an R gui, an alternative and quite nice approach, due to Brian Ripley, (see here), is to put the following lines in your 'R_HOME/etc/Rprofile.site' file:

q <- function (save = "no", status = 0, runLast = TRUE)
.Internal(quit(save, status, runLast))

One note of caution: this won't work when you invoke R from the command-line. In that case, just use the --no-save argument described in @mdsumner answer.

To learn more about 'Rprofile.site', and '.Rprofile' (an optional per-directory config file), see the always useful ?Startup help file.

Answer 2

Even more flexible (Windows), add R and RStudio to your right-click menu so you can start in any directory

R-Gui: save the following in a file rguihere.reg, and double-click

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\RGui]
@="R Gui here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\RGui\command]
@="cmd.exe /c \"pushd  %L &&start rgui --no-restore --no-save\""

RStudio

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\RStudio]
@="RStudio here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\RStudio\command]
@="cmd.exe /c \"pushd %L &&start C:\\PROGRA~1\\RStudio\\bin\\rstudio.exe\""

Answer 3

Just start up R with --no-save. See R --help.

Add this to your shortcuts (in Windows for example this is under "Target" when you right-click on the shortcut and choose properties).

Answer 4

If you're using RStudio, you can simply disable in settings.

Go to Tools -> Global options -> General and un-tick always save history.