STA 102 Introductary Biostatistics

The S-Plus Workspace

You may find it convenient to organize your class work into a project folder so that you can work on several computers without starting from scratch each time. In S-PLUS 2000, you can do this by creating a workspace, which is a snapshot of your S-Plus session containing all of your objects and documents. Once you save a workspace file, you can load it again later to recreate your session as it appeared when you last saved it. The workspace folder is a directory in which all data and documents are stored for that workspace. You should create the workspace before you start your work. For more details read Chapter 7 "Organizing your Work: The S Plus Workspace" in the Online "Guide to Statistics" for S-PLUS 2000 (available under the Help menu) or enter the topic Workspace in the S-Plus Help.

Creating a Workspace

  1. To create a workspace, go to the File menu and select Workspace and then New.
  2. In the pop-up window, specify the path to create a new folder or click browse to navigate to an existing folder. i.e D:\HOME\acpubname where acpubname is your login name or A:sta102.
  3. S-Plus will create a new database (_Data) for the workspace in the workspace folder (the path is displayed in the Database field)
  4. The Databases to Detach text box shows all databases that are attached and gives the the opportunity to detach those that are not relevant to your project. In general, you will want to select all for detachment.
  5. Click OK
  6. If this is for a new folder Click OK in the prompt to create.
All objects that you create during your S-Plus session will be stored here.

Saving a Workspace

  1. From the main menu, select File, Workspace, and then Save
  2. When you save a new workspace, a default name based on the name of the workspace folder appears in the name text box. Click Save.
  3. If any open documents have not been saved, S-Plus will prompt you to save. Documents are saved in the workspace folder.
NOTE: be sure to back up your workspace folder to a place where it will not be accidentally erased!

Opening a Workspace

Next time you start up S-Plus and you want to continue your work, you can open your saved workspace. Select File > Workspace > Open.

Navigate to the desired workspace folder and select the name of the workspace file (Workspace files end in .sws by default). Click Open. S-plus should load everything as it appeared when you last saved. Continue to work and then save again to update.

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