Break pipeline execution in R

with breakerofchains

Suppose you have a tidyverse-style pipeline and you want to check out an intermediate output (eg, find the input to the ggplot below).

library(tidyverse)

starwars |> 
  select(species, sex, height, mass) |> 
  group_by(species, sex) |> 
  summarise(
    height = mean(height, na.rm = TRUE),
    mass = mean(mass, na.rm = TRUE)
  ) |> 
  ggplot(aes(x = height, y = mass)) +
  geom_point()

The long option is to just select the code you want and run that. But it’s very fiddly, and difficult to just add or remove one line, which I find annoying when debugging.

Enter breakerofchains, which adds the ability to run a pipeline up to your cursor.

Install the package with:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("MilesMcBain/breakerofchains")

and assign a keyboard shortcut¹ - I like Ctrl+Shift+B.

Then to use, just put your cursor somewhere on the last line you want to execute and hit your shortcut - the code will be executed and the result will appear in your console.

For a bonus tip, you can combine this with shrtcts to add even more functionality, eg:

• Ctrl+Shift+V to View the dataset;
• Ctrl+Shift+G to dplyr::glimpse the dataset; and
• Ctrl+Shift+W to write the data to a temporary CSV file and open the file in Excel.

To set this up, install shrtcts:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("gadenbuie/shrtcts")

add the following to your .shrtcts.R file, which you can edit using shrtcts::edit_shortcuts():

#' View broken chain
#'
#' A shortcut to View(df) where the cursor rests
#'
#' @interactive
#' 
#' @shortcut Ctrl+Shift+V
function() {
  View(breakerofchains::break_chain(print_result = FALSE, assign_result = FALSE))
}

#' Glimpse broken chain
#'
#' A shortcut to glimpse(df) where the cursor rests
#'
#' @interactive
#' 
#' @shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G
function() {
  dplyr::glimpse(breakerofchains::break_chain(print_result = FALSE, assign_result = FALSE))
}

#' Writetmp broken chain
#'
#' A shortcut to export dataset as temp CSV where the cursor rests
#'
#' @interactive
#' 
#' @shortcut Ctrl+Shift+W
function() {
  
  writetmp <- function (.data) 
  {
    tmpfile <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
    readr::write_csv(.data, tmpfile)
    browseURL(tmpfile)
    invisible(.data)
  }
  
  writetmp(breakerofchains::break_chain(print_result = FALSE, assign_result = FALSE))
}

Finally, edit your .Rprofile² to add:

if (interactive() && requireNamespace("shrtcts", quietly = TRUE)) {
  shrtcts::add_rstudio_shortcuts(set_keyboard_shortcuts = TRUE)
}

You might need to close and re-open RStudio up to two times the first time for this to work.

Enjoy your new-found productivity!

Attribution

Thanks for the tip, Miles M and Travis G.

Footnotes

1. in RStudio, Ctrl+Shift+P and Modify Keyboard Shortcuts

2. with usethis::edit_r_profile()