A lot of programming style are personal choices and as such varies from individual to individual. See my comments below.
On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 09:01 -0500, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote: > Thanks Adai. A couple questions/comments about this. > > Adaikalavan Ramasamy wrote: > > I use emacs and ESS to develop the scripts. The new releases of R has > > the script function already in built. > > I use emacs and ESS too (in Linux). I do not know about the script > function you mention. It's not in my version (2.1.1) and I couldn't > find it in an RSiteSearch either. I meant to say in newer releases of R _for Windows only_ has script function. Look under File->New scripts (untested). But however it does not appear to have syntax highlighting or auto indenting that emacs has. > > Typically I keep all the data and scripts related to a project in its > > own folder, so I have minimal worry about paths. > > I do the same. > > > To save large and associated objects, I use > > save(x, y, z, file="lala.rda", compress=TRUE) > > and then to load x, y, z in another session or workspace I use > > load("lala.rda") > > > > To save small dataframes and matrices, I use > > write.table(mat, file="lala.txt", sep="\t") > > and to read it back I use > > mat <- read.delim(file="lala.txt", row.names=1) > > Am I correct that load() or read.<whatever>() or even data() will > bring the objects into the current workspace while attach() can > attach a save() data frame to the search path? Is one approach > better than the other in general? I think you are correct. The attach function appears to have two functions now : a) attach("lala.rda") loads objects from lala.rda into the search path b) attach(obj) makes the named columns of a dataframe or list available in the search path. Therefore you only need to type 'aaa' instead of obj$aaa or obj[ , "aaa"] The second is the more popular form of usage. Personally I would rather not use attach() and prefer to type obj$aaa or use in the context of lm( aaa ~ ., data=obj ). > > The problem with .RData (via quit or save.image), is that it keeps all > > intermediate objects which can be unnecessarily bloated and confusing. > > Further you will have difficulty distinguishing one .RData from the > > other by looking at the filename alone. > > If you don't save the workspace on q(), do you also lose the history for > that session (although when working in emacs, this is rarely a problem)? I would argue that script file is a better way than history files because I can clean up any test or wrong codes I might have in the script file. However if you prefer to save the history, you can use savehistory(file="history.txt") at any point Regards, Adai <SNIP> ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html