[R] attaching something.RData in pos=1

[Peter Perkins]

hi -

running R 1.1.1 under LinuxPPC:

i was pleasantly surprised to find that attaching .RData files was added
somewhere along the line, but i am having trouble getting the sort of
behavior that i got used to in S.  specifically, i'd like to be able to
attach() a file at pos=1 and edit its contents directly, then save() and
detach() it.  i know i can load() the file, but this merges its contents
with the current global environment.  i could attach() at pos=2, but
that makes editing/creating/deleting awkward.  i could q() and restart R
from another directory, but that is also awkward.

i guess i still haven't quite figured out how the global environment is
supposed to work.  when i attach(file, pos=1), R does something funny: 
it seems to do a load(file) and then put an empty (at least ls() sees it
as empty) reference to the file in the search list at pos=2.

i'm happy to modify my behavior from S as long as i can get a simple way
to work on several separate projects.  can't find this in the archives. 
thanks for any help.

- peter
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