dump {base}R Documentation

Text Representations of R Objects

Description

This function takes a vector of names of R objects and produces text representations of the objects on a file or connection.

Usage

dump(list, file = "dumpdata.R", append = FALSE, envir = parent.frame())

Arguments

list character. The names of one or more R objects to be dumped.
file either a character string naming a file or a connection. "" indicates output to the console.
append if TRUE, output will be appended to file; otherwise, it will overwrite the contents of file.
envir the environment to search for objects.

Details

At present the implementation of dump is very incomplete and it really only works for functions and simple vectors and lists.

dump will warn if fewer characters were written to a file than expected, which may indicate a full or corrupt file system.

A dump file can be sourced into another R (or perhaps S) session, but the function save is designed to be used for transporting R data, and will work with R objects that dump does not handle.

Note

The envir argument was added at version 1.7.0, and changed the default search path for named objects to include the environment from which dump was called.

As dump is defined in the base namespace, the base package will be searched before the global environment unless dump is called from the top level or the envir argument is given explicitly.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also

dput, dget, write.
save for a more reliable way to save R objects.

Examples

x <- 1; y <- 1:10
dump(ls(patt='^[xyz]'), "xyz.Rdmped")
unlink("xyz.Rdmped")

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