Use `saveRDS/readRDS` instead of `save/load`

[ashiklom]

Description

save saves objects according to their name in the current environment, and load reads them into the target environment under the name that they were saved. This creates some problems/annoyances:

For save, the following will throw a (confusing) error because the object literally called 'mylist[["thing1"]]' does not exist in the environment.

mylist <- list(thing1 = "something", thing2 = "something_else")
save(mylist[["thing1"]], file = "thing1.RData")
# Error in save(mylist[["thing1"]], file = "thing1.RData") : 
#   object ‘mylist[["thing1"]]’ not found

To accomplish this, you need to do annoying things like:

thing1 <- mylist[["thing1"]]
save(thing1, file = "thing1.RData")
rm(thing1)

For load, to read specific objects into other names, we need to do some awkward gymnastics with environments, like:

myenv <- new.env()
load("thing1.RData", envir = myenv)
thing1a <- myenv$thing1

If you don't do that, load will silently override objects with the same name in the current environment:

thing1 <- "something else"
load("thing1.RData")
print(thing1)
# [1] "something"   # NOTE: `thing1` has been overridden!

Proposed Solution

All of these problems go away with saveRDS / readRDS.

saveRDS(mylist[["thing1"]], file = "thing1.rds")
thing1a <- readRDS("thing1.rds")

[ashiklom]

For a real-life example, see f1f7146.

[SouravVerma-art]

I'd like to work on this issue. I've reviewed the problem and have a good understanding of what needs to be done. Could you please assign this to me?