[R] vi[m] editing of past commands in R command line

I've been told that my messages are being rejected because it is being posted via nabble in HTML format. I was advised to re-send this directly to r-help@r-project.org. My apologies if you get this twice. When I use bash + readline and ~/.inputrc contains editing-mode vi, I can press v to

[R] vi[m] editing of past commands in R command line

When I use bash + readline and ~/.inputrc contains editing-mode vi, I can press v to switch to from the command line editing to a full vi session editing of a command. This doesn't seem to happen in R. Is there a configuration setting/file that I can set to get this behaviour? Furthermore,