R | 初识RStudio

If you mouse over a new file, a new menu will appear that suggests the various file formats available to you. RScript and RMarkdown files are the most common file types for use, but you can also generate RNotebooks, web apps, websites or slide presentations. If you click on any one of these, a new tab in the source quadrant will open.

The Session menu has some RSpecific functions in which you can restart, interrupt or terminate R. These can be helpful if R isn’t behaving or is stuck and you want to stop what it is doing and start from scratch.

The Tools menu is a treasure trove of functions for you to explore. For now, you should know that this is where you can go to install new packages, see you next lecture, set up your version control software, see future lesson, linking GitHub and RStudio and set your options and preferences for how RStudio looks and functions.





In files, you can see all of the files in your current working directory. If this isn’t where you want to save or retrieve files from, you can also change the current working directory in this tab using the ellipsis at the far right, finding the desired folder and then under the More cog wheel, setting this new folder as the working directory.

In the plots tab, if you generate a plot with your code, it will appear here. You can use the arrows to navigate to previously generated plots. The zoom function will open the plot in a new window that is much larger than the quadrant. “Export” is how you save the plot. You can either save it as an image or as a PDF. The broom icon clears all plots from memory.

The “Packages” tab will be explored more in depth in the next lesson on R packages. Here you can see all the packages you have installed, load and unload these packages and update them. The “Help” tab is where you find the documentation for your R packages in various functions. In the upper right of this panel, there is a search function for when you have a specific function or package in question.