How to set R environment variables on Linux

Friday, April 24, 2015

I call an R script from PHP and it works well.
I just call it using this function

shell_exec("Rscript play.r");

To do that I had to set environment variables in Windows
to the R executable be recognized by the OS.

Well now I am trying to do the same for Linux. I have the same error that I had on Windows before setting environment variables:

Rscript:not found 127

I think the Linux operating system is not finding the path to the R "executable" when I call it from PHP.

I think that I must to set the environment variables to R on Linux
but I don't know how to do that.

What should I do?

Answer

You do not necessarily need to set environmental variables. Simply call Rscript by its full path:

shell_exec("/usr/local/bin/Rscript ...");

Of course, change the path to wherever it really is. You can check from a shell by running which Rscript.

If you really want to change the PATH for PHP, you should check this Stack Overflow post.

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