The list argument of rm is supposed to be a character vector, as indicated in ?rm. not a list.

You can do something like this:

rm( list = Filter( exists, c("rv1","rv2", "rv3", "rv4") ) )

or, considering rm only warns when you attempt to remove objects, you could:

suppressWarnings( rm( list = c("rv1","rv2", "rv3", "rv4") ) )

Romain

On 12/17/2009 11:33 AM, Cormac Long wrote:

Hello,

I have the following problem when trying to use rm:

In a top level script file I have a loop iterating over some index. The loop
is not contained within a function, so the scope of variables declared in
the loop is global. Within this loop I generate several variables which
should be removed at the end of each iteration. To do this, I wrote a
function to clean up the workspace. An example is included here:

cleanUpWorkspace<-function()
{
     #Remove key data sructures, if they have been declared:
     delList<-list()
     for(varname in c("rv1","rv2", "rv3", "rv4")) {
         if(exists(varname)) {
             delList<-append(delList, varname)
         }
     }
     if(length(delList)>0) {
         rm(list=delList, pos=-1)
         #rm(list=delList, envir=parent.env(environment()))
         #rm(list=delList, envir=globalenv())
     }
}

Unfortunately, this fails to work - it aborts with the following error:
Error in rm(list = delList, pos = -1) : invalid first argument
if I use rm(list=delList, pos=-1)

Or with the following error:
Error in rm(list = delList, evir = parent.env(environment())) :
   ... must contain names or character strings
if I use rm(list=delList, envir=parent.env(environment())) or
rm(list=delList, envir=globalenv())

I get the same errors if I bypass rm entirely and use
.Internal(remove(delList, globalenv(),FALSE)).

I am using R version 2.10.0 running on a windows 7 box.

I want to declare the clean-up within a function for design purposes. The
full project is spread over several files and I am trying to keep the main
loop as simple as possible.

Sincerly,
Cormac Long.



--
Romain Francois
Professional R Enthusiast
+33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
|- http://tr.im/HlX9 : new package : bibtex
|- http://tr.im/Gq7i : ohloh
`- http://tr.im/FtUu : new package : highlight

______________________________________________
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.

Reply via email to