base (version 3.3)

load: Reload Saved Datasets

Description

Reload datasets written with the function save.

Usage

load(file, envir = parent.frame(), verbose = FALSE)

Arguments

file

a (readable binary-mode) connection or a character string giving the name of the file to load (when tilde expansion is done).

envir

the environment where the data should be loaded.

verbose

should item names be printed during loading?

Value

A character vector of the names of objects created, invisibly.

Warning

Saved R objects are binary files, even those saved with ascii = TRUE, so ensure that they are transferred without conversion of end of line markers. load tries to detect such a conversion and gives an informative error message. load() replaces all existing objects with the same names in the current environment (typically your workspace, .GlobalEnv) and hence potentially overwrites important data. It is considerably safer to use envir = to load into a different environment, or to attach(file) which load()s into a new entry in the search path.

Details

load can load R objects saved in the current or any earlier format. It can read a compressed file (see save) directly from a file or from a suitable connection (including a call to url).

A not-open connection will be opened in mode "rb" and closed after use. Any connection other than a gzfile or gzcon connection will be wrapped in gzcon to allow compressed saves to be handled: note that this leaves the connection in an altered state (in particular, binary-only), and that it needs to be closed explicitly (it will not be garbage-collected).

Only R objects saved in the current format (used since R 1.4.0) can be read from a connection. If no input is available on a connection a warning will be given, but any input not in the current format will result in a error.

Loading from an earlier version will give a warning about the ‘magic number’: magic numbers 1971:1977 are from R < 0.99.0, and RD[ABX]1 from R 0.99.0 to R 1.3.1. These are all obsolete, and you are strongly recommended to re-save such files in a current format.

The verbose argument is mainly intended for debugging. If it is TRUE, then as objects from the file are loaded, their names will be printed to the console. If verbose is set to an integer value greater than one, additional names corresponding to attributes and other parts of individual objects will also be printed. Larger values will print names to a greater depth.

Objects can be saved with references to namespaces, usually as part of the environment of a function or formula. As from R 3.1.0 such objects can be loaded even if the namespace is not available: it is replaced by a reference to the global environment with a warning. The warning identifies the first object with such a reference (but there may be more than one).

See Also

save, download.file; further attach as wrapper for load().

For other interfaces to the underlying serialization format, see unserialize and readRDS.

Examples

## save all data
xx <- pi # to ensure there is some data
save(list = ls(all = TRUE), file= "all.RData")
rm(xx)

## restore the saved values to the current environment
local({
   load("all.RData")
   ls()
})

xx <- exp(1:3)
## restore the saved values to the user's workspace
load("all.RData") ## which is here *equivalent* to
## load("all.RData", .GlobalEnv)
## This however annihilates all objects in .GlobalEnv with the same names !
xx # no longer exp(1:3)
rm(xx)
attach("all.RData") # safer and will warn about masked objects w/ same name in .GlobalEnv
ls(pos = 2)
##  also typically need to cleanup the search path:
detach("file:all.RData")

## clean up (the example):
unlink("all.RData")

## Not run: 
# con <- url("http://some.where.net/R/data/example.rda")
# ## print the value to see what objects were created.
# print(load(con))
# close(con) # url() always opens the connection
# ## End(Not run)