🙈 mousey methods

Why show us the wrong way?

I know, this seems like a perverse manner of going about things, but these are ways of getting information that will help others to help you. This means that there’s a decent chance you’re new to this whole endeavor, and may need some stop-gap, familiar methods before you begin to feel comfortable with best practices.

There are good reasons to steer clear of your 💽 mouse.¹ Clicking is slow, and there are faster ways to retrieve this information using code. That said…

What version of RStudio am I using?

From within RStudio go to the Rstudio menu and select About RStudio.

When the About RStudio window opens, the version of RStudio that you’re using will be written right below the logo (see below).

What version of R am I using?

Open RStudio and go to the Console pane. If you scroll up to the top, the version of R that you are using is in the very first line printed in your console.

What version of a package am I using?

In the Viewer pane, click on the Packages tab. The packages you have loaded will have check marks to the left of their names, and, in the far right column, you’ll see the package versions.

What mac OS am I on?

From the apple icon in the upper-left corner of your screen, open About This Mac.

The version of your operating system (OS) will be listed right below its name (see below).

What version of [insert OS here] am I on?!

😳 Oh, umm…I have no idea. If you’re on Windows, Microsoft Support has a little guide here: Which Windows operating system am I running?. If you’re running an open-source Linux distribution (or whatever), you’re way cooler than I am 🕶️, and I highly doubt you’ll need this guide.

What about the right way of doing things?!

That’s out of the scope of this post! But, feel free to wander over to the Help section of the tidyverse site for a head start (or go straight to the reprex docs if you’re feeling bold).