Detect the current execution context — detect_execution

Identifies which of three execution environments the code is currently running in: an interactive R session, a quarto render call, or a plain Rscript invocation. This is useful for writing code that behaves correctly across all three contexts, such as resolving input file paths in a portable way.

Usage

detect_execution_context(interactive_fn = interactive)

Arguments

interactive_fn: A function. Used to detect whether the session is interactive. Defaults to base::interactive. Override in tests to simulate different execution environments.

Value

A character string, one of "interactive", "quarto", or "rscript".

Details

Detection follows a priority order:

If interactive() is TRUE, returns "interactive".
If the environment variable QUARTO_DOCUMENT_PATH is set and non-empty, returns "quarto".
Otherwise, returns "rscript".

Examples

# \donttest{
context <- detect_execution_context()

input_file <- switch(context,
  interactive = "data/sample.csv",
  quarto      = params$input_file,
  rscript     = commandArgs(trailingOnly = TRUE)[1]
)
# }