remove all variables except functions

Question

I have loaded in a R console different type of objects. I can remove them all using

rm(list=ls())

or remove only the functions (but not the

Answer 1

The posted setdiff answer is nice. I just thought I'd post this related function I wrote a while back. Its usefulness is up to the reader :-).

lstype<-function(type='closure'){ 
    inlist<-ls(.GlobalEnv)
    if (type=='function') type <-'closure'
    typelist<-sapply(sapply(inlist,get),typeof)
    return(names(typelist[typelist==type]))
}

Answer 2

You can use the following command to clear out ALL variables. Be careful because it you cannot get your variables back.

rm(list=ls(all=TRUE))

Answer 3

Here's a one-liner that removes all objects except for functions:

rm(list = setdiff(ls(), lsf.str()))

It uses setdiff to find the subset of objects in the global environment (as returned by ls()) that don't have mode function (as returned by lsf.str())

Answer 4

Here's a pretty convenient function I picked up somewhere and adjusted a little. Might be nice to keep in the directory.

list.objects <- function(env = .GlobalEnv) 
{
    if(!is.environment(env)){
        env <- deparse(substitute(env))
        stop(sprintf('"%s" must be an environment', env))
    }
    obj.type <- function(x) class(get(x, envir = env))
    foo <- sapply(ls(envir = env), obj.type)
    object.name <- names(foo)
    names(foo) <- seq(length(foo))
    dd <- data.frame(CLASS = foo, OBJECT = object.name, 
                     stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
    dd[order(dd$CLASS),]
}

> x <- 1:5
> d <- data.frame(x)
> list.objects()
#        CLASS       OBJECT
# 1 data.frame            d
# 2   function list.objects
# 3    integer            x 
> list.objects(env = x)
# Error in list.objects(env = x) : "x" must be an environment

Answer 5

I wrote this to remove all objects apart from functions from the current environment (Programming language used is R with IDE R-Studio):

    remove_list=c()                             # create a vector

      for(i in 1:NROW(ls())){                   # repeat over all objects in environment
        if(class(get(ls()[i]))!="function"){    # if object is *not* a function
         remove_list=c(remove_list,ls()[i])     # ..add to vector remove_list
         }    
      }

    rm(list=remove_list)                        # remove all objects named in remove_list

Notes-

The argument "list" in rm(list=) must be a character vector.

The name of an object in position i of the current environment is returned from ls()[i] and the object itself from get(ls()[i]). Therefore the class of an object is returned from class(get(ls()[i]))