dput/dget were not intended to save/restore large objects. Understand what is happening in the use of dput/dget. dput is creating a text file that can reconstitute the object with dget. dget is having to read the file in and then parse it:
> dget function (file) eval(parse(file = file)) <environment: namespace:base> This can be a complex process if there object is large and complex. save/load basically take the binary object and save it with little additional processing and the load is just as fast. In general, most of the functions can be used both correctly and incorrectly. So should a warning for every potential condition/criteria be put in the help file? Probably not. It is hard to protect the user against him/herself. So what you are doing in seeing how long alternatives take is a good learning tool and will help you improve your use of the features. On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Jack Tanner <i...@hotmail.com> wrote: > I have a data structure that is fast to dput(), but very slow to dget(). On > disk, the file is about 35MB. > >> system.time(dget("r.txt")) > user system elapsed > 142.93 1.27 192.84 > > The same data structure is fast to save() and fast to load(). The .RData file > on > disk is about 12MB. > >> system.time(load("r.RData")) > user system elapsed > 4.89 0.08 7.82 > > I imagine that this is a known speed issue with dget, and that the recommended > solution is to use load, which is fine with me. If so, perhaps a note to this > effect could be added to the dget help page. > > All timings above using > > R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15) > Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit) > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Jim Holtman Cincinnati, OH +1 513 646 9390 What is the problem that you are trying to solve? ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.