From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Thu Mar 30 19:23:11 2006
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:23:11 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Rd] compress defaults for save() and save.image()
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0603301815180.23911@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>

I have changed the default in save() to compress = !ascii.  This seems 
quite safe, as almost always save() is called explicitly and people will
appreciate that it might take a little time to save large objects (and 
depending on your system, compression could even be faster).

Should we also change the default in save.image()?  That is almost always 
used implicitly, via q(), a menu ....  There are arguments that it is a 
more serious change so should not be done at the end of the release cycle, 
and also that large .RData files are something people would want to avoid.

BTW, the defaults can be changed via options() (see ?save): has anyone 
ever found that useful?

And whilst I am feeling curious, has anyone used save(ascii = TRUE) in 
recent years?

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



[Rd] compress defaults for save() and save.image()
Prof Brian Ripley