Thank you all for your enlightening replies.
Hadley mentioned first that a mere assignment in R does not double storage.
Hence once solution is:
y <- x
rm(x)
Gabor gave a deeper solution which permits assigning a second name:
makeActive Binding("y",function() x, .GlobalEnv)
The reason for my question was to form a function:
--read, in chunks, a large file which does not fit in memory
--abstract one variable, which does fit in memory.
-- save that variable in .Rdata format under a chosen name.
DIAG1 = getvar("bigfile.txt", startchar, endchar)
save(DIAG1, file = "DIAG1.Rdata")
I am now testing this approach.
Cordially,
Giles
Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH
Research Scientist & Statistician
Tel 609 292-8012, -5666
Fax 609 292-9288
giles.crane at doh.state.nj.us
__________________
This does not really answer your question but the following
lets you refer to an object by a second name although the object
still has its original name as well.
a <- 3
makeActiveBinding("b", function() a, .GlobalEnv)
NULL
b
[1] 3
a <- 4 b
[1] 4
On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM, <Giles.Crane at doh.state.nj.us> wrote:
Is there a way to rename R objects?
I am looking for a way to rename objects
without making new objects.
#For example:
x = c(1:40)
# I wish to use a function to rename x, already created, to y, perhaps by
obj.rename(x,y)
# or
obj.rename("x","y")
There are numerous examples of renaming
variables (columns) in dataframes, but I have
found no methods for renaming objects.
The functionassign() does not do this.
Thank you for any help you can give.
Cordially
Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH
Research Scientist & Statistician
New Jersey Department of Health & Senior Services
Tel 609 292-8012, -5666
Fax 609 292-9288
giles.crane at doh.state.nj.us
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