Ctrl + Enter behaviour to execute R statements like in RStudio

[hcaginlenk]

The problem

In a .qmd document written only with R, Ctrl + Enter only sends the line where cursor is located to the console without running it.

Expected behaviour

Ctrl + Enter would send the whole R statement, whether it is a function or a piped statement ( "|>" ) to the console and run it.

add_zeroes <- function(string) {  
  ifelse( 
     nchar(string) < 8, 
     str_pad(string, width = 8, side = "left", pad = "0"), 
     string 
   ) 
}

For example in the above function, I expect that Ctrl + Enter would send the whole function to the console and run it, as long as the cursor is place within the function boundaries (as in RStudio). Now, the shortcut only sends the line where the cursor is located. If the cursor is in the first line, the shortcut would only send add_zeroes <- function(string) { without running the code.
The behaviour is similar with the pipe statements (that are not invalid or incomplete).

Tried solutions

Opening and closing positron. I use positron in two different computers and the behaviour is the same.

Is there an option I am missing? Thanks in advance!

System details:

Positron Version: 2025.08.0 (user setup) build 130
Code - OSS Version: 1.102.0
Commit: 76ddce5
Date: 2025-08-01T20:29:20.753Z
Electron: 35.6.0
Chromium: 134.0.6998.205
Node.js: 22.15.1
V8: 13.4.114.21-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045

Quarto extension v1.123.0

[juliasilge]

Thanks for this report! It is definitely expected that Ctrl/Cmd+Enter sends the current entire statement to the console, from an .Rmd or .qmd. I see this working correctly here, where I have used Ctrl/Cmd+Enter with your example:

I see that you say you observe this on two computers! 😱 Do you have any custom keyboard shortcuts defined, or any additional extensions you have installed?

[juliasilge]

Can you try using the quarto.runCurrent command directly from the command palette to see if that works correctly? Put your cursor in a multiline statement, then bring up the command palette and choose Quarto: Run Current Code. It should run the whole multiline statement.

[hcaginlenk]

As Esben mentioned below, Ctrl + Enter or Run command behave as expected after fixing any syntax errors in the whole .qmd document. I am not sure if this is the intended behaviour.

[osman-mo94]

I've encountered the exact same issue several times, and eventually also found that correcting syntax errors (even if unrelated to the code statement in question) seemed to resolve the issue.

Seems strange and initially caused me a lot of confusion.

[Renames1]

+1, selecting the whole statement runs adequately but when you do not select it just runs one line. Could very well be related to syntax errors (did not check), as i was fiddling around with some code snippets, but was nevertheless confusing and annoying.

[juliasilge]

Ah gotcha! We are tracking this problem in #8350; want to take a look to see if you agree and add a 👍?

I think we may need to bump that up in priority because it is impacting a lot of folks. It's probably not realistic to have our statement range provider only work if you code has no syntax errors in it.

[esbenlykke]

I can reproduce this when the .qmd has a parse error anywhere in the document. In that state, Ctrl/Cmd+Enter falls back to sending only the current line. I also see it when a header or fenced div is not separated by a blank line from the following code fence.

So fix any syntax errors (even outside the active chunk) and/or add a blank line between headers/divs and code fences.

[hcaginlenk]

Yes, this seems to be the answer. In both of my machines, I have created a new document with only one code chunk without any syntax errors and Ctrl+Enter (or Quarto: Run Current Code command) behaves as expected. In the .qmd files that contain any of the errors mentioned above, neither the shortcut nor the run command behave as expected (only send the current line).