[R] RData file

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Margaret Riordan wrote:

> When I tied to reload the data I got the following error message
> 
> load("C:\\My Documents\\dataR.RData")
> Error in load("C:\\My Documents\\dataR.RData") :
>         restore file corrupted -- no data loaded
> 
> I think the data has all been destroyed what would have caused this, is it
> something to do with the amount of memory in use ?

Should not be: I've used 150Mb or more happily on Windows.  The issue is I
think that you got a fatal error on quitting, and that is very likely to
corrupt any file that is open, like .RData.  The question is why you got a
crash then: I've never seen one but Martyn Plummer's suggestion of a lack
of file space is plausible.  However, the code is supposed to generate a
fatal error in the event of the writes not working, and when I tried to
provoke it, that is what happened.

Maybe because I used R when it was a lot less reliable, but I would
never dream of keeping the only copy of anything important in
.RData, so I save or dump objects of any importance.  Similarly,
I back up .RData files of any importance before working on them.
(I wonder if R itself should do that: write a temp file and rename it
when the write is complete, the way sound text editors do?)

> Thomas Lumley wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Margaret Riordan wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > > I just quit R Version 1.1.0 in the usual q() manner which resulted in  a
> > > fatal error, which seems to have wiped out all my RData file.
> > >
> > > Now when I try to load up R it gives the message
> > >
> > > Error: restore file corrupted -- no data loaded
> > > Fatal error : unable to restore saved data
> > >  (remove .RData or increase memory)
> > >
> > > How do I access the RData or what do I increase the memory size to to
> > > retrieve my data ?
> >
> > You may be able to retrieve the file by renaming it, starting R, and using
> > load() to load it. I had this happen once, but couldn't reproduce the
> > problem afterwards.
> >
> >         -thomas
> >
> > Thomas Lumley
> > Assistant Professor, Biostatistics
> > University of Washington, Seattle

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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