Hello:

  This is a philosophical question more than an appeal for help: One
well-supported model for ess is to dump objects to files using C-c d,
editing them there and loading them back in. This is a way of enforcing
the "source is real" philosophy: all R objects are kept as source files
and loaded as necessary. It appears that this philosophy also implies
that you don't save objects (with save.image) at the end of each R
session for reloading in future sessions. Instead you source needed
objects back in as required. 

 

  While I agree with the philosophy, I don't dump and edit objects this
way. Instead, I create source files, each containing a bunch of related
functions, and source them in to R. To modify the function, I edit the
source file and souce it back in, just as I would with most other
languages. To avoid re-creating my environment each session, I save the
image. I also save out any non-function objects created without sourcing
them to text files. 

 

  The advantage I see to my approach is that I can see source for all my
functions together in one file rather then storing a single file per
object. One advantage of the dump-objects approach is that ess keeps
track of where the source is for each object. But I can use emacs TAGS
for that as well. 

 

  Are there other advantages to the dump-objects approach that I am
missing? Thanks for any insight. 

 

  Jeff

 

 

____________________________________________

JEFF MARCUS
Manager, Applied Data Analysis

NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
One Wayside Road
Burlington  MA  01803

781 565 5000   Office
781-565 5001   Fax
NUANCE.COM <http://www.nuance.com/> 

The experience speaks for itself (tm) 




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