R data formats: RData, Rda, Rds etc

RDs files are used to store multiple R objects within a single file. It is a short form of RData.

To save multiple objects into an RData file, we use the save() function.

For Eg.;

  save(a, b, c, file = "myobjects.RData")

To save all the objects in the workspace, we use the save.image() function.

  save.image(file = "data/projectimage.RData")

To load all of the objects in the workspace from an Rds file, we use the load function.

  load(file = "data/projectimage.RData")

Rds files store a single R object. According to R documentation:

saveRDS(object, file = "", ascii = FALSE, version = NULL,
        compress = TRUE, refhook = NULL)
readRDS(file, refhook = NULL)

These functions provide the means to save a single R object to a connection (typically a file) and to restore the object, quite possibly under a different name. This varies from saving and load, which save and restore one or more named objects into an environment.

They are widely used by R itself, for example, to store metadata for a package and to store the help.search databases: the ".rds" file extension is most often used.

Usage:

Arguments:

Object - R object to serialize.

File - a connection or the name of the file where the R object is saved to or read from.

Ascii- a logical. If TRUE or NA, an ASCII representation is written; otherwise (default), a binary one is used.

Version - the workspace format version to use. NULL specifies the current default version (3). The only other supported value is 2, the default from R 1.4.0 to R 3.5.0.

Compress - A logical specifying whether saving to a named file is to use "gzip" compression, or one of "gzip", "bzip2" or "xz" to indicate the type of compression to be used. Ignored if the file is a connection.

Refhook - a hook function for handling reference objects.

Hope my answer helped you!