[Rd] Excluding objects from save.image

[Simon Urbanek]

Tim,

On May 21, 2014, at 9:54 PM, Tim Keitt <tkeitt at utexas.edu> wrote:

> When dealing with object holding pointers that are only valid during a single session, it would be convenient to exclude them from being saved with the session image. (I am assuming that `quit` calls `save.image` before quitting or is it internal?) Currently they are saved with the pointer converted to NULL. Its a bit surprising for users not realizing the object is no longer valid.
> 

than's not surprising - it's actually very useful, because it tells you that the object has been restored. Typically, packages using external pointers use this to re-inilitialize the object from serialized data or other sources if possible.


> My thought is to designate a class name (perhaps "no.save") and exclude anything that inherits from that.

Why would you want to not save it? It exists, so saving it makes it possible to decide on the behavior as needed - as opposed to not saving it and thus losing the information.

Cheers,
Simon



> I've hacked a quick implementation below.
> I did not issue a warning, but it would be a simple fix.
> 
> Does anyone else see this as useful?
> 
> THK
> 
> -- 
> http://www.keittlab.org/
> 
> .new.save.image = function (file = ".RData", version = NULL, ascii = FALSE,
> compress = !ascii,
>                            safe = TRUE, omit.no.save = TRUE)   # added
> "omit.no.save" argument
> {
>  if (!is.character(file) || file == "")
>    stop("'file' must be non-empty string")
>  opts <- getOption("save.image.defaults")
>  if (is.null(opts))
>    opts <- getOption("save.defaults")
>  if (missing(safe) && !is.null(opts$safe))
>    safe <- opts$safe
>  if (missing(ascii) && !is.null(opts$ascii))
>    ascii <- opts$ascii
>  if (missing(compress) && !is.null(opts$compress))
>    compress <- opts$compress
>  if (missing(version))
>    version <- opts$version
>  if (safe) {
>    outfile <- paste0(file, "Tmp")
>    i <- 0
>    while (file.exists(outfile)) {
>      i <- i + 1
>      outfile <- paste0(file, "Tmp", i)
>    }
>  }
>  else outfile <- file
>  on.exit(file.remove(outfile))
> 
>  ### Omit objects inheriting from "no.save" ###
> 
>  objns <- ls(envir = .GlobalEnv, all.names = TRUE)
> 
>  if ( omit.no.save )  ### make part of options?
>    objns <- subset(objns, sapply(objns, function(x)
>    {
>      ! inherits(get(x, envir = .GlobalEnv), "no.save")
>    }))
> 
>  save(list = objns, file = outfile,
>       version = version, ascii = ascii, compress = compress,
>       envir = .GlobalEnv, precheck = FALSE)
> 
>  ### End code changes ###
> 
>  if (safe)
>    if (!file.rename(outfile, file)) {
>      on.exit()
>      stop(gettextf("image could not be renamed and is left in %s",
>                    outfile), domain = NA)
>    }
>  on.exit()
> }
> 
> setClass("no.save")
> setClass("test.class", slots = c(s1 = "externalptr"))
> setIs("test.class", "no.save")
> reg.obj = "regular object"
> no.save.obj = new("test.class")
> .image.file = tempfile()
> save.image(.image.file)
> rm(reg.obj, no.save.obj)
> load(.image.file)
> print(ls())
> unlink(.image.file)
> .new.save.image(.image.file)
> rm(reg.obj, no.save.obj)
> load(.image.file)
> print(ls())
> unlink(.image.file)
> 
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