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save/load hooks

2 messages · Tim Keitt, Brian Ripley

Original
Tim Keitt
# 
I'd like to suggest a small feature be added to R.  It would be nice if
"load" and "save" had function hooks for object initialization and
finalization, e.g.,

	load.hook <- function(x) UseMethod("load.hook")
	save.hook <- function(x) UseMethod("save.hook")

These would then be called on each object saved or loaded.  The default
method would do nothing.   This would allow saved objects to
reinitialize their state when loaded.

Cheers,
Tim
Brian Ripley
#
On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Timothy H. Keitt wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
R objects contain their complete state as far as R is concerned.  Could you
give us an example of why you want this?  I guess you must have some
non-standard objects in mind, in which case it seems wasteful to do this
for all R objects in a workspace.

Another potential problem on loading is ordering: how do you ensure that
what you want to do is already available?  The workspace is loaded before
any profiles, so only a minimal set of functions is available, excludng any
packages bar base.  And the error handling at that stage is I think
incomplete, given that tey() does not work in profiles.