R help - Nov 2010 - save() with 64 bit and 32 bit R

hi,

i have been using a 64 bit desktop machine to process a whole lot of
data which i have then subsequently used save() to store. i am now
wanting to use this data on my laptop machine, which is a 32 bit
install. i suppose that i should not be surprised that the 64 bit data
files do not open on my 32 bit machine! does anyone have a smart idea as
to how these data can be reformatted for 32 bits? unfortunately the data
processing that i did on the 64 bit machine took just under 20 days to
complete, so i am not very keen to just throw away this data and begin
again on the 32 bit machine.

sorry, in retrospect this all seems rather idiotic, but i assumed that
the data stored by save() would be compatible between 64 bit and 32 bit
(there is no warning in the manual).

thanks,
andrew.

Andrew Collier wrote:
> hi,
> 
> i have been using a 64 bit desktop machine to process a whole lot of
> data which i have then subsequently used save() to store. i am now
> wanting to use this data on my laptop machine, which is a 32 bit
> install. i suppose that i should not be surprised that the 64 bit data
> files do not open on my 32 bit machine! does anyone have a smart idea as
> to how these data can be reformatted for 32 bits? unfortunately the data
> processing that i did on the 64 bit machine took just under 20 days to
> complete, so i am not very keen to just throw away this data and begin
> again on the 32 bit machine.
> 
> sorry, in retrospect this all seems rather idiotic, but i assumed that
> the data stored by save() would be compatible between 64 bit and 32 bit
> (there is no warning in the manual).
> 
The data would normally be compatible on all architectures.  However, it 
may need the same version of R (or a newer one), and may need to have 
the same packages installed in order to read it.

Duncan Murdoch

On Wed, 3 Nov 2010, Andrew Collier wrote:
> hi,
>
> i have been using a 64 bit desktop machine to process a whole lot of
> data which i have then subsequently used save() to store. i am now
> wanting to use this data on my laptop machine, which is a 32 bit
> install. i suppose that i should not be surprised that the 64 bit data
> files do not open on my 32 bit machine! does anyone have a smart idea as
> to how these data can be reformatted for 32 bits? unfortunately the data
> processing that i did on the 64 bit machine took just under 20 days to
> complete, so i am not very keen to just throw away this data and begin
> again on the 32 bit machine.
>
> sorry, in retrospect this all seems rather idiotic, but i assumed that
> the data stored by save() would be compatible between 64 bit and 32 bit
> (there is no warning in the manual).
It is, and the help says so:

      All R platforms use the XDR (bigendian) representation of C ints
      and doubles in binary save-d files, and these are portable across
      all R platforms. (ASCII saves used to be useful for moving data
      between platforms but are now mainly of historical interest.)

So there is something specific about your save, and you haven't even 
told us the error message (see the posting guide).  One possibility is 
that you saved references to namespaces, when those packages need to 
be installed on the machine used to load() the .RData file (but this 
is fairly unusual).  Another is that you simply don't have enough 
memory on the 32-bit machine, when one remedy is to go back to the 
64-bit machine and save individual objects.
>
> thanks,
> andrew.
>
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>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595