[R] renaming objects

[Giles.Crane at doh.state.nj.us]

Thank you all for your enlightening replies.

Hadley mentioned first that a mere assignment in R does not double storage.
Hence once solution is:
y <- x
rm(x)

Gabor gave a deeper solution which permits assigning a second name:
makeActive Binding("y",function() x, .GlobalEnv)

The reason for my question was to form a function:
    --read, in chunks, a large file which does not fit in memory
    --abstract one variable, which does fit in memory.
    -- save that variable in .Rdata format under a chosen name.

DIAG1 = getvar("bigfile.txt", startchar, endchar)
save(DIAG1, file = "DIAG1.Rdata")

I am now testing this approach.
Cordially,
Giles

Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH
Research Scientist & Statistician
Tel 609 292-8012, -5666
Fax 609 292-9288
giles.crane at doh.state.nj.us

__________________


This does not really answer your question but the following
lets you refer to an object by a second name although the object
still has its original name as well.

> a <- 3
> makeActiveBinding("b", function() a, .GlobalEnv)
NULL
> b
[1] 3
> a <- 4
> b
[1] 4


On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM,  <Giles.Crane at doh.state.nj.us> wrote:
>
> Is there a way to rename R objects?
> I am looking for a way to rename objects
> without making new objects.
>
> #For example:
> x = c(1:40)
> # I wish to use a function to rename x, already created, to y, perhaps by
> obj.rename(x,y)
> # or
> obj.rename("x","y")
>
> There are numerous examples of renaming
> variables (columns) in dataframes, but I have
> found no methods for renaming objects.
> The functionassign() does not do this.
>
> Thank you for any help you can give.
> Cordially
>
> Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH
> Research Scientist & Statistician
> New Jersey Department of Health & Senior Services
> Tel 609 292-8012, -5666
> Fax 609 292-9288
> giles.crane at doh.state.nj.us
>
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