[R] "attach" in R corr. to Spus one

[Petr Pikal]

Hallo Andy,

Well, my original respond was to Utsav's question if it is possible to attach a 
directory in R as in S+.

I personally prefer to start R session from a directory where I have all data and 
results from certain project (txt, doc, xls, png, pdf....). Therefore I use only 
.RData and I usually store histories of my work in separate files, so as basically all 
my data and my knowledge of attaching different directories in one session is not 
at all comprehensive. 

But if I am not mistaken you cannot attach a directory without some suitable file 
(.RData or saved file) in it but you can specify different working directory by 
setwd() and list files in it by list.files(). I presume that after setwd() I can 
attach(".RData") to get access to objects from it but ls() still gives me list of 
objects stored in an .RData file in the directory from which R was started.

OTOH saving an object by save(object, file="myfile") saves the object to 
directory specified by setwd().

Cheers
Petr

On 9 Jun 2004 at 9:00, Liaw, Andy wrote:

> Now that I acutally read the original question:
> 
> If there are .RData files in other directories that you want to
> attach(), you can certainly do that.  One difference between R and
> S-plus is that in S-plus you can attach() a directory at position 1,
> effectively making that the place that new objects are stored.  In R,
> attach()ing at position 1 is not allowed.  I must say that I like the
> way R works better, as it does a better job at preventing me from
> keeping garbage around.
> 
> Best,
> Andy
> 
> > From: Liaw, Andy
> > 
> > > From: Frank E Harrell Jr
> > > 
> > > Petr Pikal wrote:
> > > > Hallo
> > > > 
> > > > On 9 Jun 2004 at 2:06, Utsav Boobna wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > >>Hi,
> > > >>    I am a newbie to R, just trying to switch from
> > > >>Splus. I am wondering to know if there is any such
> > > >>command in R as "attach" in Splus which can be used to
> > > >>attach the full directory.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I would recommend you to spent some time going through 
> > > docummentation and 
> > > > especially FAQs. 
> > > > 
> > > > getwd and setwd for setting the working directory
> > > > 
> > > > but in R objects are stored in one file .Rdata.
> > > 
> > > I prefer to control which objects are stored, and to use 
> > > compression, by 
> > > using save( ) and load( ), rather than using the .Rdata mechanism.
> > > save( ) can store one object or an entire series of objects in one
> > > .rda file.
> > 
> > I mostly do the same.  For fairly large objects or objects 
> > that I do not
> > want to accidentally alter during a session, I use attach() instead
> > of load().  One convenience of attach() is that since the objects
> > are not loaded into .GlobalEnv, I would have a less cluttered .RData
> > even if I do save the workspace when I q().
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
> > 
> >  
> > > Frank
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > OTOH in S+ objects are (were - I did not use it since quite 
> > > a lot time) stored as 
> > > > separate files.
> > > > 
> > > > For attaching objects see
> > > > 
> > > > ?attach
> > > > 
> > > > Cheers
> > > > Petr
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > >>Also, any idea/referrence about, how to load c
> > > >>functions in R would be highly appreciated.
> > > >>
> > > >>Thanks,
> > > >>Utsav
> > > > 
> > > > Petr Pikal
> > > > petr.pikal at precheza.cz
> > > > 
> > > > ______________________________________________
> > > > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > > > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > > > PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> > > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Frank E 
> > > Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
> > >                       Department of Biostatistics   
> > > Vanderbilt University
> 
> ______________________________________________
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Petr Pikal
petr.pikal at precheza.cz