`useFancyQuotes=FALSE` in important in my`.Rprofile`

I want to highlight a single option I added to my .Rprofile about two years ago, that helped me immensely,

options(useFancyQuotes=FALSE)

If I’m working on a remote machine, I make it a point to add this one line at least. Let me explain why.

I build and install packages while using R at times, and these packages have dependencies. More likely than not, the dependencies will not be available to R. Following this, R will suggest installing these packages.

Without the option mentioned above, they would look like the following,

~/D/home ❯❯❯ R CMD build packFinder
* checking for file ‘packFinder/DESCRIPTION’ ... OK
* preparing ‘packFinder’:
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* installing the package to build vignettes
      -----------------------------------
ERROR: dependency ‘kmer’ is not available for package ‘packFinder’
* removing ‘/private/var/folders/6d/6dsfg6190rs6qm2fvbyml920smsq5s/T/RtmpSsK2vS/Rinst14a6c49e9df5/packFinder’
      -----------------------------------
ERROR: package installation failed

Notice that the ‘kmer’ is surrounded by fancy quotes (‘’). If I copy and paste that package with the quotes in R, it would fail. And if there is more than one package missing, it’s an absolute nightmare to replace all the fancy quotes with straight quotes.

TL;DR

Use options(useFancyQuotes=FALSE) in your .Rprofile. It’ll save time, so you can copy and paste without having to replace the quotes in your R session.