While its nice to be able to read in a variety of data formats, it’s equally important to be able to output data somewhere.

The readr package provides data exporting functions which have the pattern write_*:

• write_csv(),
• write_delim(), others.

From write_csv() documentation:

write_csv(x, file, 
  na = "NA", append = FALSE, 
  col_names = !append, quote_escape = "double",
  eol = "\n", path = deprecated()
)

Rows: 9794 Columns: 31
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (24): LocationAbbr, LocationDesc, TopicType, TopicDesc, MeasureDesc, Dat...
dbl  (7): YEAR, Data_Value, Data_Value_Std_Err, Low_Confidence_Limit, High_C...

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

x: data frame you want to write

file: file path where you want to R object written; it can be:

• an absolute path,
• a relative path (relative to your working directory),
• a file name only (which writes the file to your working directory)
• remember to include the file extension (.csv, .txt, or .tsv)

# Examples

write_csv(dat, file = "YouthTobacco_newNames.csv")

write_delim(dat, file = "YouthTobacco_newNames.csv", delim = ",")

.rds is an extension for R native file format.

write_rds() and read_rds() from readr package can be used to write/read a single R object to/from file.

Saving datasets in .rds format can save time if you have to read it back in later.

# write an object: a data frame "dat"
write_rds(dat, file = "yts_dataset.rds")

# write an object: vector "x"
x <- c(1, 3, 3)
write_rds(x, file = "my_vector.rds")

# read an object from file and assign to a new object named "y"
x2 <- read_rds(file = "my_vector.rds")
x2

[1] 1 3 3

You may want to export a set of objects from R for later use, either to save time or to use in another R script. You can output these to an .RData file individually, or save your entire Environment with save.image().

save(x, x2, file = "x_x2_output.RData")
save.image(file = "my_environment.RData")

If there is an .rds or .RData file that you want to work with, you can open it into your environment using the file icon.

Can also save your entire environment or a subset of objects in your environment to a new .RData file with the save icon. Click the “List” button and switch to “Grid” to select which objects to delete or keep before saving the Environment.