3.12 FAQ

Q: I cannot see my R Objects in the global environment.
A: when you click on “R: (not attached)” on the bottom bar or type .vsc.attach() into the terminal, your objects should start showing up in your global environment.

Q: How to hide variables in OUTLINE view?
A: OUTLINE view by default shows all variables in the current R script, making it difficult to locate your true sections. To hide variables, go to command palette, type “Outline: Show”, there is a list of objects that you can choose to show or hide (you can choose to set this for workspace or the user). Here is my current setting:

{
  "outline.showArrays": false,
  "outline.showBooleans": false,
  "outline.showClasses": true,
  "outline.showConstants": false,
  "outline.showFields": false // this hides most variables you actually don't want to see
}

Note that some answers mention that you should use "outline.showVariables": false, but this does NOT work for me. Instead, I use "outline.showFields": false to hide most variables.

To set outline appearance for a specific language, you can use the following settings:

{
  "[r]": {
    "outline.showArrays": false,
    "outline.showBooleans": false,
    "outline.showClasses": true,
    "outline.showConstants": false,
    "outline.showFields": false
  },
  "[rmd]": {
    "outline.showKeys": false,
  }
}
  • Set outline.showKeys to false will prevent code chunks from being shown in the OUTLINE view of Rmd files.

Multiple language specific editor settings

You can now configure language specific editor settings for multiple languages at once. The following example shows how you can customize settings for javascript and typescript languages together in your settings.json file:

"[javascript][typescript]": {
  "editor.maxTokenizationLineLength": 2500
}

See HERE for a complete list of icons and their meanings in the OUTLINE view.

The following tables shows the icons that you most commonly see in the OUTLINE view.

Icon Name Symbol type
Methods and Functions method, function, constructor
Variables variable
Fields field
Words text
Constants constant
Classes class
Structures struct
Modules module
Properties and Attributes property
  • Constant applies to Quarto sections. Need to set "outline.showConstants": true, to show sections properly in the OUTLINE view.

References: