[R] Reloading old R Environments/Workspaces

[Spencer Brackett]

Partly because the procedure itself is incomplete, but yes I see the
illogic nature of my position.


On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 4:22 PM Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>
wrote:

> 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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> >and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> --
> Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
>

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