dput: Write an Object to a File or Recreate it

Description

Writes an ASCII text representation of an R object to a file or connection, or uses one to recreate the object.

Usage

dput(x, file = "", control = c("keepNA", "keepInteger", "showAttributes"))
dget(file)

Arguments

an object.

file

either a character string naming a file or a connection. "" indicates output to the console.

control

character vector indicating deparsing options. See .deparseOpts for their description.

Value

For dput, the first argument invisibly.For dget, the object created.

Details

dput opens file and deparses the object x into that file. The object name is not written (unlike dump). If x is a function the associated environment is stripped. Hence scoping information can be lost.

Deparsing an object is difficult, and not always possible. With the default control, dput() attempts to deparse in a way that is readable, but for more complex or unusual objects (see dump, not likely to be parsed as identical to the original. Use control = "all" for the most complete deparsing; use control = NULL for the simplest deparsing, not even including attributes.

dput will warn if fewer characters were written to a file than expected, which may indicate a full or corrupt file system.

To display saved source rather than deparsing the internal representation include "useSource" in control. R currently saves source only for function definitions. If you do not care about source representation (e.g. for a data object) set options(keep.source = FALSE) before calling dget.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

Examples

Run this code

## Write an ASCII version of mean to the file "foo"
dput(mean, "foo")
## And read it back into 'bar'
bar <- dget("foo")
unlink("foo")
## Create a function with comments
baz <- function(x) {
  # Subtract from one
  1-x
}
## and display it
dput(baz)
## and now display the saved source
dput(baz, control = "useSource")

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