CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
aj31
aj31

Reputation: 187

Clearing out the R workspace

When trying to clear out an R workspace, why does code snippet #1 work, but not #2

Snippet #1

rm(list = ls())

Snippet #2

list = ls()
rm(list)

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2151

Answers (1)

Ben Bolker
Ben Bolker

Reputation: 226182

Because you are not naming the argument (i.e. the list= part of the command), R interprets list as an object to be removed, not a list of arguments to be removed: from ?rm:

rm (..., list = character(), pos = -1, envir = as.environment(pos), inherits = FALSE)

Arguments

... the objects to be removed, as names (unquoted) or character strings (quoted)

list a character vector naming objects to be removed.

(This would be true even if you called the variable something else, e.g. junk = ls(); rm(junk) vs. rm(list=junk))

Upvotes: 5

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