On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 13:16, Adaikalavan RAMASAMY wrote:
*.R is for the script file and is ASCII type. *.Rdata (or sometimes *.rda) is the usual extension for R data and contains binary information.
If you try to cat a *.Rdata file, you will end up with gibberish as it is binary.
Try opening *.Rdata with emacs if you can. Emacs will recognise it as a fundamental type and not as an ESS type. There might be ways to associate Rdata files with ESS. But other people might not consider reading your "*.Rdata" files.
I dunno about this, but if I open R under emacs first and then I load my foo.RData, it loads fine.
By "fine", you mean it looks like normal R code?
On Un*x systems(including Linux), the extension is a matter of convenience, not necessity. It's possible to save your R code, transcripts, etc with any extension you want (.R, .S, or even silly things, like .exe if you want). And Emacs will still cheerfully read them just fine.
However, just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *should* ;)
There is a *convention* in R that workspace images or saved objects (using save.image() or save() ) should have filenames that end in .RData . R code should have filenames that end in .R . This isn't necessary, but it helps keep things tidy and easy to organise. ESS also has some built-ins to recognise .R as R code, so it can do nice things like highlight syntax, indent well, and send code to an R session to be evaluated.
Short answer: anything that's R code *should* be named with .R at the end. Anthing R created after you told it save() or save.image() or answered "y" to the "Save workspace image" question *should* have a name ending with .RData . None of this is strictly necessary, but there are a bunch of nice things that happen if you do.
Clear as mud? ;)
Cheers
Jason -- Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd. http://www.indigoindustrial.co.nz 64-21-343-545 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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