[R] Workspace size

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, statwi01 wrote:

> Can I determine the approximate size of a workspace on the harddisk
> before saving it via "sys.save.image(name)" ?

No.  (Also, it depends on the options in force: saved images can be ASCII 
or binary or compressed or not, and it is impossible to predict how
well compression will work: it can be very effective.)

And please note what the help page says:

      Internal functions in the base package, which are only
      user-visible because of the special nature of the base namespace.

      'sys.save.image' is a system function that is called by 'q()' and
      its GUI analogs; 'sys.load.image' is called by the startup code.
      These functions should not be called directly and are subject to
      change.

      'sys.save.image' closes all connections first, to ensure that it
      is able to open a connection to save the image.  This is
      appropriate when called from 'q()' and allies, but reinforces the
      warning that it should not be called directly.

so please don't use it.

> Thanks in advance
>
>  Sigbert

-- 
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