Getting Linux solution for user input in batch mode to work on Windows

Question

This seems to work on Linux but not on Windows (at least not when I start it from inside RStudio):

readline2 = function(prompt=""){
        cat(prompt)
        readLines("stdin", 1)
}

print(readline2("enter a number: "))

# enter a number: 42
# [1] "42"

Even when you type in a number and press return it won't come back and R has to be killed by pushing the "STOP" button :-(

My question: Can I also make this work on Windows? And if yes how?

Answer 1

Yes, you just have modify the connection to stdin(), like this:

readline2 = function(prompt=""){
  cat(prompt)
  readLines(stdin(),1)
}

readline2("enter a number: ")