R help - Oct 2017 - How to save and restore a workspace

Hello,
I recently downloaded R in hopes of learning to use it for statistics. 
I have promptly run into a problem, as I am unable to save, and later recover, a
workspace so I can resume work where I left off.
I am using Windows.
I indicate "yes" to the pop up after q().  Then when I later reopen R
Console and click on File, I cannot get my prior workspace to appear in the R
Console frame so I can resume work.
In the File drop down menu I have tried Load Workspace, Load History, Display
file(s)..., opened R Type: R Workspace with no luck.
I have read about this in two different books, the R Manual, and R FAQs, used
the RGui help function, and still cannot do it.
I have used Windows for years, but I am ignorant about programming.
Would appreciate any help you might offer.
I live in the Denver area, so if there are any local resources you could direct
me to, I would be grateful for that as well.

Thank you,
Jon VanDeventer

Sent from my iPad

Hi Jon,
Saving your workspace doesn't mean that everything will be rerun when
you start a new R session. I just means that persistent objects like
data frames will be there. If you type:

objects()

you will see all of those things that were there when you ended in the
last session. Things like commands will be in the "history", so you
can retrieve them just as you did at the end of the last session (up
arrow). It may be a better solution if you save sequences of commands
as R script files (e.g. "something.R") as you can run them:

source("something.R")

and edit and save them again.

Jim

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 9:12 AM,  <jonnvan at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello,
> I recently downloaded R in hopes of learning to use it for statistics.
> I have promptly run into a problem, as I am unable to save, and later
recover, a workspace so I can resume work where I left off.
> I am using Windows.
> I indicate "yes" to the pop up after q().  Then when I later
reopen R Console and click on File, I cannot get my prior workspace to appear in
the R Console frame so I can resume work.
> In the File drop down menu I have tried Load Workspace, Load History,
Display file(s)..., opened R Type: R Workspace with no luck.
> I have read about this in two different books, the R Manual, and R FAQs,
used the RGui help function, and still cannot do it.
> I have used Windows for years, but I am ignorant about programming.
> Would appreciate any help you might offer.
> I live in the Denver area, so if there are any local resources you could
direct me to, I would be grateful for that as well.
>
> Thank you,
> Jon VanDeventer
>
> Sent from my iPad
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Suggestion:

Read the "Intro to R tutorial" that ships with R. Alternatively, there
are
also many good online tutorials, some free, some not. You'll need to spend
some time and effort to learn R's basic data structures and paradigms even
if you don't get involved in any serious programming.

If this is not something you are willing or able to do, you might check
here for a point and click GUI interface that give you access to some of
R's basic functionality: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/  . You
will have to determine whether this serves your needs and priorities of
course.


Cheers,
Bert

Bert Gunter

"The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and
sticking things into it."
-- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip )

On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 3:45 PM, Jim Lemon <drjimlemon at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi Jon,
> Saving your workspace doesn't mean that everything will be rerun when
> you start a new R session. I just means that persistent objects like
> data frames will be there. If you type:
>
> objects()
>
> you will see all of those things that were there when you ended in the
> last session. Things like commands will be in the "history", so
you
> can retrieve them just as you did at the end of the last session (up
> arrow). It may be a better solution if you save sequences of commands
> as R script files (e.g. "something.R") as you can run them:
>
> source("something.R")
>
> and edit and save them again.
>
> Jim
>
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 9:12 AM,  <jonnvan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I recently downloaded R in hopes of learning to use it for statistics.
> > I have promptly run into a problem, as I am unable to save, and later
> recover, a workspace so I can resume work where I left off.
> > I am using Windows.
> > I indicate "yes" to the pop up after q().  Then when I later
reopen R
> Console and click on File, I cannot get my prior workspace to appear in the
> R Console frame so I can resume work.
> > In the File drop down menu I have tried Load Workspace, Load History,
> Display file(s)..., opened R Type: R Workspace with no luck.
> > I have read about this in two different books, the R Manual, and R
FAQs,
> used the RGui help function, and still cannot do it.
> > I have used Windows for years, but I am ignorant about programming.
> > Would appreciate any help you might offer.
> > I live in the Denver area, so if there are any local resources you
could
> direct me to, I would be grateful for that as well.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Jon VanDeventer
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

To be specific, the effect of loading packages with the "library"
function is NOT saved when you save the workspace... and if you come back much
later after you have updated some packages the old saved objects may not work
well with those new packages. At the very least you have to re-load all
necessary packages yourself before you load a saved workspace. Many users avoid
ever using the "save workspace" option because it can cause old
mistakes to come back and haunt you later.

This kind of issue has lead me to become quite systematic about writing R files
(as Jim suggested below) that re-do all of my work on a given task (omitting the
false starts needed to learn things) on each of my projects starting from a
blank workspace. It may seem like a tedious approach to the beginner, but it is
actually very comforting to know that I can look through every step and verify
that it did what I wanted it to, without wondering how some particular
intermediate result was computed six months ago and saved for later use. If one
step is particularly slow, I may comment out (our put an "if" around)
the statements that originally created and saved that object with saveRDS, and
load it instead of recomputing it once I trust it. But the key is to always
focus on building sequences of R statements, and later on building functions
rather than poking and prodding a workspace like it was a spreadsheet.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On October 23, 2017 3:45:29 PM PDT, Jim Lemon <drjimlemon at gmail.com>
wrote:
>Hi Jon,
>Saving your workspace doesn't mean that everything will be rerun when
>you start a new R session. I just means that persistent objects like
>data frames will be there. If you type:
>
>objects()
>
>you will see all of those things that were there when you ended in the
>last session. Things like commands will be in the "history", so
you
>can retrieve them just as you did at the end of the last session (up
>arrow). It may be a better solution if you save sequences of commands
>as R script files (e.g. "something.R") as you can run them:
>
>source("something.R")
>
>and edit and save them again.
>
>Jim
>
>On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 9:12 AM,  <jonnvan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I recently downloaded R in hopes of learning to use it for
>statistics.
>> I have promptly run into a problem, as I am unable to save, and later
>recover, a workspace so I can resume work where I left off.
>> I am using Windows.
>> I indicate "yes" to the pop up after q().  Then when I later
reopen R
>Console and click on File, I cannot get my prior workspace to appear in
>the R Console frame so I can resume work.
>> In the File drop down menu I have tried Load Workspace, Load History,
>Display file(s)..., opened R Type: R Workspace with no luck.
>> I have read about this in two different books, the R Manual, and R
>FAQs, used the RGui help function, and still cannot do it.
>> I have used Windows for years, but I am ignorant about programming.
>> Would appreciate any help you might offer.
>> I live in the Denver area, so if there are any local resources you
>could direct me to, I would be grateful for that as well.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Jon VanDeventer
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Saving your workspace means that the variables you currently have defined in
your session [ everything that shows up when you type ls() ] are saved to a
file, by default named ?.RData?. To restore the workspace, you use the ?Load
Workspace? command and navigate to the (same) .RData file. Its default location
for Windows, as far as I know, is your ?Documents? folder. So look there.

I see that you tried the Load Workspace command, and didn?t get what you were
looking for. I just tested what I described above, and it did work. So either
you didn?t navigate to and open .RData, or you have some other idea about what
saving and loading a workspace means. Hopefully, it?s the former!

With some effort, you can learn to save different .RData files for different
projects; for that see the R Windows FAQ.

By the way, this is much easier on Linux, and on Mac when working in a Terminal
(command line) environment.

-Don

--
Don MacQueen
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Ave., L-627
Livermore, CA 94550
925-423-1062
Lab cell 925-724-7509
 
 

On 10/23/17, 3:45 PM, "R-help on behalf of Jim Lemon"
<r-help-bounces at r-project.org on behalf of drjimlemon at gmail.com>
wrote:

    Hi Jon,
    Saving your workspace doesn't mean that everything will be rerun when
    you start a new R session. I just means that persistent objects like
    data frames will be there. If you type:
    
    objects()
    
    you will see all of those things that were there when you ended in the
    last session. Things like commands will be in the "history", so
you
    can retrieve them just as you did at the end of the last session (up
    arrow). It may be a better solution if you save sequences of commands
    as R script files (e.g. "something.R") as you can run them:
    
    source("something.R")
    
    and edit and save them again.
    
    Jim
    
    On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 9:12 AM,  <jonnvan at gmail.com> wrote:
    > Hello,
    > I recently downloaded R in hopes of learning to use it for statistics.
    > I have promptly run into a problem, as I am unable to save, and later
recover, a workspace so I can resume work where I left off.
    > I am using Windows.
    > I indicate "yes" to the pop up after q().  Then when I later
reopen R Console and click on File, I cannot get my prior workspace to appear in
the R Console frame so I can resume work.
    > In the File drop down menu I have tried Load Workspace, Load History,
Display file(s)..., opened R Type: R Workspace with no luck.
    > I have read about this in two different books, the R Manual, and R
FAQs, used the RGui help function, and still cannot do it.
    > I have used Windows for years, but I am ignorant about programming.
    > Would appreciate any help you might offer.
    > I live in the Denver area, so if there are any local resources you
could direct me to, I would be grateful for that as well.
    >
    > Thank you,
    > Jon VanDeventer
    >
    > Sent from my iPad
    > ______________________________________________
    > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
    > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
    > PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
    > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
    
    ______________________________________________
    R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
    https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
    PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
    and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.