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Is it possible to run multiple .R files from the shell or a bash script, in sequence, in the same R session (so without having to write intermediate results to disk)?

E.g. if file1.R contains a=1 and file2.R print(a+1)

then do something like

$ Rscript file1.R file2.R
[1] 2

(of course a workaround would be to stitch the scripts together or have a master script sourcing 1 and 2)

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  • you have the bash as a tag, why don't you make a multine bash code then ? Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 8:51
  • a bash script calling Rscript twice will also instantiate two R sessions, and return " 'a' not found" in the second one. Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 8:59
  • oh - then you need to make a wrapper with 'source' command - sb made an answer Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 9:06

2 Answers 2

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You could write a wrapper script that calls each script in turn:

source("file1.R")
source("file2.R")

Call this source_files.R and then run Rscript source_files.R. Of course, with something this simple you can also just pass the statements on the command line:

Rscript -e 'source("file1.R"); source("file2.R")'
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Thanks, yes this was my 'master script' workaround. Was wondering if there was a way of avoiding it, but it's definitely a way.
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The accepted answer really helped me, thank you!

In poking around the documentation, I also discovered that Rscript also takes multiple expressions, provided each expression is preceded by the "-e" flag.

So, this would also work:

Rscript -e "source('file1.R')" -e "source('file2.R')" [args]
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