R help - Aug 2009 - PowerCut Killed R - is my code retrievable?

I've been tweaking code for several days on and off in R, cut and pasting in
from a text editor (I just leave them open all the time).  I think I got
something that was usable but then a powersurge tripped the fuses and
unfortunately the machine I was working on doesn't have a UPS.

Does R hold the command data in cache some place?  I've purposefully not
opened R since the crash so that if it did I don't over write it?

I guess what I'm wanting is the equivalent of the linux up arrow which
repeats the last line.  i know that exists in R but from what I recall it
didn't work when you close the R session.  Is that stored in a hidden file
someplace that I could copy?

Its not a huge piece of code or anything - but it was code I tweaked over
several stages as I'm new to R and so it was part of my learning process.

Also - is there a better way for the future?  I know some people use IDE's
but is that for serious programming or for building a small function and
tweaking it?

Thanks

Calum

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On 20/08/2009, at 9:57 AM, Polwart Calum (County Durham and  
Darlington NHS Foundation Trust) wrote:
> I've been tweaking code for several days on and off in R, cut and  
> pasting in from a text editor (I just leave them open all the  
> time).  I think I got something that was usable but then a  
> powersurge tripped the fuses and unfortunately the machine I was  
> working on doesn't have a UPS.
>
> Does R hold the command data in cache some place?  I've  
> purposefully not opened R since the crash so that if it did I don't  
> over write it?
>
> I guess what I'm wanting is the equivalent of the linux up arrow  
> which repeats the last line.  i know that exists in R but from what  
> I recall it didn't work when you close the R session.  Is that  
> stored in a hidden file someplace that I could copy?
>
> Its not a huge piece of code or anything - but it was code I  
> tweaked over several stages as I'm new to R and so it was part of  
> my learning process.
>
> Also - is there a better way for the future?  I know some people  
> use IDE's but is that for serious programming or for building a  
> small function and tweaking it?
If you've been cut-and-pasting from a text editor, then your commands
*might* be in the file .Rhistory.  Unfortunately this history gets saved
only when you exit R (and by default only when you also say ``yes'' to
saving the workspace) or if you explicitly savehistory().

After a powersurge, the R workspace and history almost surely will  
not be
saved, so it is highly probable that you are SOL.  Unless you closed
the R session (and save the workspace) before the power cut.  Bummer.

Good luck.

	cheers,

		Rolf Turner

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On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 10:57 PM, Polwart Calum (County Durham and
Darlington NHS Foundation Trust)<calum.polwart at nhs.net>
wrote:
> I've been tweaking code for several days on and off in R, cut and
pasting in from a text editor (I just leave them open all the time). ?I think I
got something that was usable but then a powersurge tripped the fuses and
unfortunately the machine I was working on doesn't have a UPS.
 So you were just using the text editor as a scratch pad, and not
saving it? A half-decent text editor should be saving things to disk
as you go. For example, in emacs, if your emacs dies while editing a
file then when you restart it, it will notice and offer to restore it
from its "restore" file. If you were using emacs you might have files
like #foo.R# which are emacs' auto-restore files. Other editors might
do other things - possibly leaving files in /tmp on a Linux system
(but they might get zapped by a reboot).
> Also - is there a better way for the future? ?I know some people use
IDE's but is that for serious programming or for building a small function
and tweaking it?
 Tip #1 is save your text file scratchpads!
 Tip #2 is save your R session regularly (just do 'save.image()' and
it will save your current R session objects in a .RData file)
 Tip #3 is you could use emacs + ESS as an IDE - you run R within
emacs, giving you cut n paste of code, syntax highlighting, session
transcripts, and emacs' protection from data loss on a crash!

Barry

>>> "Polwart Calum (County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation
Trust)"
<calum.polwart at nhs.net> 08/19/09 10:57 PM
>>>
>is there a better way for the future? 
Use a text editor or something specific to R like Tinn-R and _save early
and often_. Even if your editor has an autosave. And use savePlot on
your graphs too, from within the code - don't save them manually from
the menus 'cos you won't remember which file was which plot.

That may sound like paranoia, but believe me - they really are out to
get you. 

Paranoia does have a brighter side, though; there is nothing quite like
being able to go back to the saved code and re-do the complete
statistical analysis from start to finish in about two minutes exactly
as originally carried out when your research colleagues tell you
cheerily that they found the typo in their raw data...

S

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