Problem with R Installation (potentially)

[davegoodo]

I'm a novice R user, I have R installed. I'm reading a book which has a section to do with the installation process. The book suggested that if I used the Windows Command Prompt and typed in "R" and got the message: " 'R' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file", this meant R was not installed properly. I did this and got that message. I'm wondering if I might run into problems? Not sure what to do? Uninstall R and Posit and start again? Everything works OK at the moment, but this creates a doubt.
Thanks for your help,
Dave

[AlexisW]

@davegoodo

Everything works OK at the moment

Do you mean it runs correctly in RStudio?

In that case, the most likely explanation is that R was not added to your PATH environment variable (which is how the Command Prompt finds programs).

This is not a problem for RStudio, which if I'm not mistaken is using the Registry entries to find the available and default R versions.

It can become a problem if you are trying to call R from the command line. In that case you can see and edit the Path variable as described here.

Most likely, it's not going to be a problem: if you can open R from within RStudio, that means the installation worked and you can use R.

So, in short, I suggest you check the value of the PATH, if R is not listed in there that explains why it's not found and there is no need to worry.

[davegoodo]

Thanks for the reply Alexis,

To answer your question R does run correctly in RStudio.
Not being aware of the intricacies of the installation side, I did panic when I got this result.

Your answer has put me at ease. I'm mainly into the programming side of R and not so much
the technical details. The book that I was reading did have instructions about editing the Path variable
but I was not confident with doing it, so I left it.

Generally R is running well and it was only just this issue that caused me to enquire further.
You have done that and I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I'll just continue on.

It is nice to know there is this community of R users where I can go with issues like this.

Thanks again,
Dave