[R] Reloading old R Environments/Workspaces

Jeff Newmiller jdnewm|| @end|ng |rom dcn@d@v|@@c@@u@
Thu Jul 4 22:22:36 CEST 2019


If you can't reproduce them, how do you know they are correct?

On July 4, 2019 11:34:53 AM PDT, Spencer Brackett <spbrackett20 using saintjosephhs.com> wrote:
>Thank you for the clarification. So should I not rely on importing a
>saved
>environment from now on? I am currently experiencing some difficulties
>with
>reproducing the output (aka the objects listed in my environment),
>which is
>why I was trying to load them all at once.
>
>Best,
>
>Spencer
>
>On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 1:24 PM Duncan Murdoch
><murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> On 04/07/2019 12:32 p.m., Spencer Brackett wrote:
>> > Hello again,
>> >
>> >    I might be repeating myself here, so my apologies, but do I have
>to
>> run a
>> > script file from my R Studio to reimplement my previous work for a
>given
>> > project.... so to start up where I left off.... or is opening up R
>and,
>> > with my global environment automatically reloading as it was when I
>last
>> > worked on, sufficient?
>>
>>
>> Saving your workspace when you quit is a common default, but it is
>> generally a bad idea.  Old junk collects in there, and makes new
>results
>> harder to debug.
>>
>> A better workflow is to never save the whole workspace.  If you have
>> just computed some object(s) and the computation took so long you
>don't
>> want to repeat it, then save just a minimum, and load them later in a
>> new session.
>>
>> A particularly dangerous situation happens if you sometimes save your
>> workspace and sometimes don't.  You can end up with situations like
>this:
>>
>> Session 1:  compute some random values.  Save the workspace,
>including
>> the random number key.
>>
>> Session 2:  automatically load the saved workspace.  Compute some new
>> random values.  Quit without saving the workspace.
>>
>> Session 3:  automatically load the saved workspace from Session 1,
>> including the random number seed.  Any random values computed in this
>> session could be identical to the values in Session 2, because they
>are
>> starting with the same seed.
>>
>> If you don't have a saved workspace to load, you end up with a blank
>> slate, and the random number key is generated based on time of day
>and
>> process number, so is almost certainly different in every session.
>> (Sometimes you want a repeated seed for reproducibility, but it's
>always
>> bad when you're surprised by one.)
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>
>	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 
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