R-Insight: Save All Data Objects in a Workspace to a Single File

[brichard1638]

When working in the R environment, data is created, collected, and used in the form of various list objects, vectors, models, and datasets. By applying the save.image function found in Base R, the entire active workspace can be saved to a single data file. The R file extension used must be .RData. In RStudio, data objects are extracted and subsequently converted into an .RData file from the Environment tab.

save.image(file = "my_work_space.RData")

To load the entire workspace back into an RStudio active session, apply the following code:
load("my_work_space.RData")

NOTE: If no formal file path is provided in the file argument, the file will be saved in the user's Documents folder.

[nanxstats]

From the software engineering best practice perspective, I think it's generally recommended to use functions like save(), saveRDS() for saving (serializing) individual objects, or explicitly save the data needed in a suitable file format, instead of using save.image() to save everything. Specific reasons might include:

• Reproducibility: Saving the entire global environment reduces reproducibility, as the saved environment may contain state changes not directly tied to the code.
• Debugging difficulty: Errors and issues can be much harder to trace and debug, as they could be related to an object saved in the image, not visible in the current script.
• Security: Saving the entire global environment can store sensitive information inadvertently if it's present in the environment.
• Overhead: Saving an entire environment including all objects can potentially lead to unnecessarily large file sizes.