Notepad++ Settings for R Code.
- How to avoid language extension conflict with REBOL.
- How to enable function list for R code
The language of REBOL also uses .R or .r as file extension. And it seems that Notepad++ gives a higher prioirty to REBOL. As a result, .R or .r file is intpreted as REBOL by default. To address this issue, the langs.xml file needs to be changed. This file is in C:\Users\[Your Windows User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++ folder on Windows platform. And a template copy is also in the NPP installation folder such as C:\Program Files\Notepad++. Just remove the "r" extension from the REBOL record.
Change the line
<Language name="r rebol" ext="reb" commentLine=";" commentStart="" commentEnd="">
to
<Language name="rebol" ext="reb" commentLine=";" commentStart="" commentEnd="">
Although popular R IDE like RStudio can maintain a function list for R, the list is below a long list of global and local variables. Notepad++ provides a much cleaner environment for R function coding. It is much more easier to navigate a large R function definition file in Notepad++. However, Notepad++ does not provide a REGEX parser for R functions. In the same folder as the aboved mentioned langs.xml, there is a file functionList.xml. Add the following parser to that file. This parser uses REGEX to find R function definitions and adds the full function declaration to the function list.
<!-- ========================================================= [ R ] -->
<!-- R - R class and function parser: experimental by Shipeng Sun -->
<!-- Revised from the JavaScript function parser below. -->
<parser id ="r_function" displayName="R" commentExpr="(?x)(?m-s:\#.*?$)">
<function
mainExpr="((^|\s+|[;\}\.])([A-Za-z_$][\w$]*\.)*[A-Za-z_$][\w$]*\s*([\<][\-]|[=:])|^|[\s;\}]+)\s*function(\s+[A-Za-z_$][\w$]*)?\s*\([^\)\(]*\)[\n\s]*\{"
>
<functionName>
<nameExpr expr="(([A-Za-z_$][\w$]*\s*([\<][\-]|[=:]))|([A-Za-z_$][\w$]*))\s*function(\s+[A-Za-z_$][\w$]*)?\s*\([^\)\(]*\)[\n\s]*" />
<!-- Enable the following one if only function names are displayed. -->
<!--nameExpr expr="[A-Za-z_$][\w$]*" /-->
</functionName>
</function>
</parser>
And an association record for R functions.
<association id="r_function" langID="54" />
These two files are available for download from this repository. And if everything works out fine, you should be able to see something like this.
