Keyboard shortcut for inserting roxygen #' comment start

This isn't exactly what you're looking for. But you can add an ROxygen2 skeleton for a function by placing your cursor inside the function then pressing ctr+alt+shift+R. Then if you hit enter in the ROxygen2 codeblock it will automatically add the backtick. So an alternate workflow, edit the function, then insert the skeleton and do the documentation that way.


Rstudio find/replace

enter image description here

Select text to comment out, tick regex option and specify:

  • find: ^(.+)
  • replace: #' \1

Above means to find all characters (.+) following beginning of the line ^ and replace them by the #' and the first captured group \1.

vim find/replace

enter image description here I find this option the easiest as I use Rstudio in vim mode. To replace text one only need to:

  • select text
  • go to the "command-line mode" by using : key
  • enter s/^/#' and hit enter.

s/ stands for "substitute", ^ stands for beginning of the line and #' is the text we are inserting.

This is not a default Rstudio option. Make sure you have Keybindings set to "vim" in RStudio "Global Options"


You could use an RStudio addin, you'll need a fairly recent version of RStudio. I've just created an RStudio addin that comments/uncomments using roxygen2 tags, i.e. works just like code commenting, but with #'. The addin is hosted on github.

Just install and attach a convenient keyboard shortcut.


If you are interested in other available addins, see the addinmanager addin.