Your any-RDS-to-ASCII-converter could be the R function toASCIIRDS <- function (fromRDS, toRDS) { saveRDS(readRDS(fromRDS), file = toRDS, ascii = TRUE, compress = FALSE) } which you can call from Rscript with appropriate input and output file names.
Bill Dunlap TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Will Hopper <wjhopper...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks for the input Jeff and Burt, and I could have been more clear about > what I was looking for. > > You are of course right that there is nothing preventing me from using > plain text files, I initially went with compressed binary files because > they were, of course, smaller. > > What I was curious about is if there was any existing > program/script/function/tool that converted an rds to plain text, so that I > could point git at it when creating the change set for a commit. For > example, there are programs that convert pdf documents to plain text, and > you can configure git to use these programs to convert the PDF's to plain > text before comparing the current version with the version in the last > commit, and then only add the things that have changes to the new commit. > This allows you to the track changes to a pdf file the same way you would a > text file, and your delta's don't blow up by committing the entire PDF file > each time you change part of the file. > > It would be simple enough to write something like this with some > combination of a shell script and an R script to do this same thing for > .rds files, but I wondered if there was something out there already I was > overlooking. > > I do see the point that I may be trying to compensate for a flawed premise, > perhaps I should not use a .rds file here if I'm concerned about the repo > getting too big as time goes on. I was just hoping to have my cake and eat > it too. > > - Will > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnew...@dcn.davis.ca.us> > wrote: > >> You are sending contradictory signals... do you or do you not want plain >> text files? You have not indicated what advantage you are getting from >> having binary files in your repository. By far the best answer I see to >> your dilemma is to save in ASCII format instead of the default binary >> format. >> >> On November 23, 2015 9:36:21 AM PST, Will Hopper <wjhopper...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> I'm posting to see if anyone knows of any existing resources that >>> auto-magically converts r objects in saved in .rds files to a plain text >>> representation, suitable for diffing? >>> >>> I often save the results of long running calculation as .rds files, and >>> since I use git for source control, it would be nice if there were a way to >>> convert rds files to a plain text representation for diffing, so I could >>> avoid having large commits full of binary data. Git allows you specify a >>> programs for binary --> text conversion for any file type, effectively >>> teaching git how to diff binary files. If there was something out there >>> developed to do this with .rds files, it would really like to know about it! >>> >>> I realize I could save the rds file with ascii=TRUE and compress=FALSE, but >>> that kind of defeats the point of saving as .rds in the first place. >>> >>> If there is no tool out that there anyone >>> knows of, I don't think it would >>> be too hard for me to write something with bash + Rscript to get the job >>> done, but I'd like to avoid re-inventing the wheel if possible. >>> >>> Thanks for the help! >>> >>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >>> 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. >>> >>> >> -- >> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. >> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.