>>>>> "KH" == Kurt Hornik
<Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
>>>>> Robert Gentleman writes:
>>> In preparing the next Windows
>>> release I want to make opening up system data files (and their
>>> documentation) more transparent. I would really like to adopt
>>> the convention that data files use the suffix .rdf (.dat seems
>>> like it's taken). This will make it easier to get the
builtin
>>> Windows file browsers to work on it and save me some
>>> considerable work trying to figure out what is and isn't a
data
>>> file.
MM> But why can't it just be `.R' (-> `.r' in the ...OS)?
MM>
MM> At least currently, these are simply files with valid R code. If
MM> they would end in `.R', ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) would
MM> automatically be put in the proper mode. Of course, we could also
MM> use a new ending, but I think this would only make sense if the
MM> data files would internally use a different format, e.g., data.dump
MM> / data.restore, or one which works with read.table.
>> I agree with Martin. I would be happy with .R initially and later
we
>> could add other suffixes if we have different data formats. I was
>> just going to slurp them in through source.
KH> Shall we try to be consistent about other endings, too? E.g.,
Yes, why not agree on this, now, even before implementation!
KH> rdf for R data file/format (data.dump/data.restore)
data.dump/data.restore is hopefully going to be S-plus compatible as much
as possible (that's why most of us would want it).
Hence, I think the `R' is really too much there.
Would just
dmp still be `free' (in Windoze I mean) ?
KH> table for tables
For portability, we'd probably rather need 3 letter expansions...
i.e.
tab for tables (to be readable by read.table ?!)
Note, we have to agree if read.table will be called
with (...., header = TRUE) or not.
Here, mostly for teaching purposes, we have (almost) all
our data files in the format
nam.1 col.2 var.3 ... var.<p>
<x11> <x12> <x13> ... <x1p>
<x21> <x22> <x23> ... <x2p>
.. .. .. ..
.. .. .. ..
.. .. .. ..
I.e. we don't have `rownames' most of the time and don't
want to type '1' '2' ... 'n' in front of the
variables.
Maybe we should even have
tab for the above -> read.table(<file>, header = T)
tbr for tables with rownames -> read.table(<file>)
col.1 col.2 var.3 ... var.<p>
r1 <x11> <x12> <x13> ... <x1p>
r2 <x21> <x22> <x23> ... <x2p>
.. .. .. .. ..
.. .. .. .. ..
.. .. .. .. ..
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