Thank you Barry for your time in responding! I think that will really help - the difference between attach and load were not clear to me before your reply! Also I did not know about rm() - thank you for the detail, I know you took longer than you had planned but I do appreciate it,
For those with a similar problems in the future please see the responses below: > >Jenny Barnes wrote: > >> Having tried again your suggestion of load() worked (well - it finished, which I >> assume it meant it worked). However not I am confused as to how I can check it >> has worked. >> I typed >> >>>data.out$data >> >> which called up the data from the file - but I'm not sure if this is data from >> the file I have just restored as in my "previously saved workspace restored" > > Remove it from your current workspace: > > > rm(data.out) > > then do the load('whatever') again: > > > load("/some/path/to/data.out.RData") > > then see if its magically re-appeared in your workspace: > > > data.out$data > > But now if you quit and save your workspace it'll be in your workspace >again when you start up. > > So you could consider 'attach' instead of 'load'... > > Remove data.out from your current workspace, save your current >workspace (with 'save()' - just like that with nothing in the >parentheses), then instead of load('/some/path/to/data.out.RData') use: > > > attach('/some/path/to/data.out.RData') > > This makes R search for an object called 'data.out' in that file >whenever you type 'data.out'. It will find it as long as there's not a >thing called 'data.out' in your workspace. So if you do attach(...) and >then do: > > > str(data.out) > > you'll see info about your data.out object, but then do: > > > data.out=99 > > str(data.out) > > you'll see info about '99'. Your data.out is still happily sitting in >its .RData file, its just masked by the data.out we created and set to >99. Delete that, and your data.out comes back: > > > rm(data.out) > > str(data.out) # - your data object again > > The advantage of this is that data.out wont be stored in your current >workspace again. The disadvantage is that you have to do >'attach(...whatever...)' when you start R, and that data.out can be >masked if you create something with that name in your workspace. It is a >handy thing to do if you create large data objects that aren't going to >change much. > >> Also, is it normal that if I type >> >>>data.out.RData >> >> it says >> Error: object "data.out.RData" not found > > Yes, because thats the name of the _file_ on your computer and not the >R object. > > This should be in the R manuals and help files... and I've gone on >much longer than I intended to in this email :) > >Barry ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jennifer Barnes PhD student - long range drought prediction Climate Extremes Department of Space and Climate Physics University College London Holmbury St Mary, Dorking Surrey RH5 6NT 01483 204149 07916 139187 Web: http://climate.mssl.ucl.ac.uk ______________________________________________ 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 and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.