browseURL {utils} | R Documentation

## Load URL into a WWW Browser

### Description

Load a given URL into a WWW browser.

### Usage

    browseURL(url, browser = getOption("browser"), encodeIfNeeded = FALSE)

### Arguments

`url` | a non-empty character string giving the URL to be loaded.
`browser` | a non-empty character string giving the name of the program to be used as hypertext browser. It should be in the PATH, or a full path specified. Alternatively, an R function to be called to invoke the browser.
`encodeIfNeeded` | Should the URL be encoded by `URLencode` before passing to the browser? This is not needed (and might be harmful) if the `browser` program/function itself does encoding, and can be harmful for `file://` URLs on some systems and for `http://` URLs passed to some CGI applications. Fortunately, most URLs do not need encoding.

### Details

The default browser is set by option `"browser"`, in turn set by the environment variable R_BROWSER which is by default set in file ‘R_HOME/etc/Renviron’ to a choice made manually or automatically when R was configured. (See `Startup` for where to override that default value.)

If `browser` supports remote control and R knows how to perform it, the URL is opened in any already running browser or a new one if necessary. This mechanism currently is available for browsers which support the `"-remote openURL(...)"` interface (which includes Opera 5/6, Mozilla >= 0.9.5 and Mozilla Firefox), Galeon, KDE konqueror (via kfmclient) and the GNOME interface to Mozilla. Netscape 7.0 and Opera 7 behave slightly differently, and you will need to open them first. Note that the type of browser is determined from its name, so this mechanism will only be used if the browser is installed under its canonical name.

Because `"-remote"` will use any browser displaying on the X server (whatever machine it is running on), the remote control mechanism is only used if `DISPLAY` points to the local host. This may not allow displaying more than one URL at a time from a remote host.

It is the caller's responsibility to encode `url` if necessary (see `URLencode`). This can be tricky for file URLs, where the format accepted can depend on the browser and OS.

### Examples

    ## Not run:
    ## for KDE users who want to open files in a new tab
    option(browser="kfmclient newTab")
    browseURL("http://www.r-project.org")
    ## End(Not run)

[Package utils version 2.9.2 Index]