[R] Creating datasets

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 6/3/2005 6:46 PM, Jim Lemon wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Having lost count of the times I have read the relevant section in 
> R-exts.html (and by the way, where has that useful file gone? I had to 
> look at it on CRAN.),

Should be in R_HOME/doc/manual.

  searched for "creating datasets" (this is the
> first time that Jon Baron's excellent search site has let me down) and 
> read the idiot's guide for creating packages, I am willing to admit that 
> I have failed the test.
> 
> First:
> Linux (Fedora Core 2)
> R-2.1.0
> 
> I am attempting to integrate three functions that have been kindly 
> donated to the plotrix package by Sander Oom dealing with plotting soil 
> texture. Everything works okay, but I want to add a dataset to the 
> package. R-exts says that three types of data files are okay:
> 
> R code, rectangular tables (e.g. CSV) or files created by save (.rda)
> 
> I note that all the "real" packages (oops, bundles) like MASS have three 
> files in their data directory that look like an index of the datasets, 
> the datasets themselves and something I haven't worked out yet. I 
> haven't found a description of how to do that trick.
> 
> Thus I created the dataset by reading a CSV data file into a data frame
> 
> oksoil<-read.table("oksoil.csv",sep=",")
> 
> That data frame works fine in all the functions. Then I saved it:
> 
> save(oksoil,file="/home/jim/R/plotrix/data/oksoil.rda")
> 
> But when I check the package, the examples don't work:
> 
> R CMD check /home/jim/R/plotrix
> ...
>  >  data(oksoil)
> Warning in data(oksoil) : data set 'oksoil' not found

This looks like it should have worked.  I don't know what went wrong for 
you.  Can you look in plotrix.Rcheck/plotrix/data and confirm that 
oksoil.rda got installed there?

Duncan Murdoch