Clearing all user-defined objects in R workspace

Question

I'm working with Rserve via Ruby bindings. It's pretty trivial to establish a connection to Rserve, and I assume its a good idea to persist that connection globally to avoid the overhead of tearing it down and re-building it as needed (I'm not operating in a multi-threaded environment).

Since the objects defined will stick around, and potentially class with later operations, I want to clear them out. I've seen:

myvar = 1
rm(myvar)

However, I would rather re-initialize everything, to avoid having to manually keep track of whats defined. Is this possible? Is there a significant overhead associated with it if so?

From `?rm` : `## remove (almost) everything in the working environment. ## You will get no warning, so don't do this unless you are really sure. rm(list = ls())` — Señor O, Aug 26 '13 at 20:55
I think adding `rm(list=ls(all=TRUE))` will remove everything or more at least. — Tyler Rinker, Aug 26 '13 at 20:58
As far as clashes go, this question may be relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2822532/how-can-i-neatly-clean-my-r-workspace-while-preserving-certain-objects — Frank, Aug 26 '13 at 20:58
Yes, rm(list=ls()) looks like it will hopefully do the trick. Thanks all — Allyl Isocyanate, Aug 27 '13 at 13:01

Seth · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-01T16:33:25.480

43

it is a bit dangerous but: rm(list=ls()) really, don't do this.

edited Dec 01 '17 at 16:33

answered Aug 26 '13 at 20:53

Seth

4,745
23
27

1

how to remove some variables? – Cina Jun 14 '15 at 12:23
@Cina This question may help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2822532/how-can-i-neatly-clean-my-r-workspace-while-preserving-certain-objects?lq=1 – Seth Jun 15 '15 at 18:50
3

Why is it a bit dangerous? Is it just that you might accidentally delete something you didn't want to? – user1205901 - Слава Україні Jun 24 '15 at 13:52
6

@user1205901 That is right. My personal rule is never write it in a script, but it is OK to use at the interactive command line. – Seth Jun 24 '15 at 15:06

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 30 '17 at 09:39

1

If you are working with a dataset let say named data_new, you can use the following comment to remove all information about data_new from your workspace:

rm(data = data_new)

answered May 30 '17 at 09:39

Amir

37
1

Clearing all user-defined objects in R workspace

2 Answers2