On 21-Nov-05 Berton Gunter wrote: > Please read the docs! -- especially "An Introduction to R." > There is no need whatever to have your **data** in text format > (other than, perhaps, to read into into R), which is generally > what "R format" (a .R suffix in the filename, I presume) indicates.
I would qualify this (very slightly). One of the good reasons for having data in a text file is that it is easy to edit it, along with the fact that a frequent format for "primary" data is textual -- e.g. CSV. In my experience, one can often encounter errors in data that need correction quite some time after they have first been used in R. (I'm talking mainly about non-obvious errors: plausible values that are in fact wrong, missing values in the wrong place or extra ones introduced, etc.) Once one has saved out data as R-data, there is a psychological prejudice that they don't need looking at again (this is one of those psycho-logical "inferences", which "follows" from the practical fact that data in R-Data format are "for" just loading). Just a thought ... Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Nov-05 Time: 18:14:28 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
