R devel - Feb 2018 - saveRDS() overwrites file when object is not found

I ran into this behaviour when accidentally running a line of code that I
shouldn't have.

When saving over an rds with an object that's not found, I would have
expected saveRDS to not touch the file.

saveRDS(iris, "test.rds")
file.size("test.rds")
#> [1] 1080
saveRDS(no_object_here, "test.rds")
#> Error in saveRDS(no_object_here, "test.rds"): object
'no_object_here'
not found
file.size("test.rds")
#> [1] 20
file.remove("test.rds")

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Thanks, this has been already reported as bug 17358. Addressed in 
R-devel 74238. R may still create a corrupt file, though, in other 
circumstances (e.g. if it runs out of memory or is interrupted during 
serialization, etc).

Tomas

On 02/07/2018 04:14 PM, Kenny Bell wrote:
> I ran into this behaviour when accidentally running a line of code that I
> shouldn't have.
>
> When saving over an rds with an object that's not found, I would have
> expected saveRDS to not touch the file.
>
> saveRDS(iris, "test.rds")
> file.size("test.rds")
> #> [1] 1080
> saveRDS(no_object_here, "test.rds")
> #> Error in saveRDS(no_object_here, "test.rds"): object
'no_object_here'
> not found
> file.size("test.rds")
> #> [1] 20
> file.remove("test.rds")
>
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>
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