Thank you all for your enlightening replies. Hadley mentioned first that a mere assignment in R does not double storage. Hence once solution is: y <- x rm(x)
Gabor gave a deeper solution which permits assigning a second name: makeActive Binding("y",function() x, .GlobalEnv) The reason for my question was to form a function: --read, in chunks, a large file which does not fit in memory --abstract one variable, which does fit in memory. -- save that variable in .Rdata format under a chosen name. DIAG1 = getvar("bigfile.txt", startchar, endchar) save(DIAG1, file = "DIAG1.Rdata") I am now testing this approach. Cordially, Giles Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH Research Scientist & Statistician Tel 609 292-8012, -5666 Fax 609 292-9288 [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________ This does not really answer your question but the following lets you refer to an object by a second name although the object still has its original name as well. > a <- 3 > makeActiveBinding("b", function() a, .GlobalEnv) NULL > b [1] 3 > a <- 4 > b [1] 4 On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there a way to rename R objects? > I am looking for a way to rename objects > without making new objects. > > #For example: > x = c(1:40) > # I wish to use a function to rename x, already created, to y, perhaps by > obj.rename(x,y) > # or > obj.rename("x","y") > > There are numerous examples of renaming > variables (columns) in dataframes, but I have > found no methods for renaming objects. > The functionassign() does not do this. > > Thank you for any help you can give. > Cordially > > Giles Crane, M.Phil., MPH > Research Scientist & Statistician > New Jersey Department of Health & Senior Services > Tel 609 292-8012, -5666 > Fax 609 292-9288 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > ______________________________________________ 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.