How can I load an object into a variable name that I specify from an R data file?

Question

When you save a variable in an R data file using save, it is saved under whatever name it had in the session that saved it. When I later go to load it from anot

Answer 1

In case anyone is looking to do this with a plain source file, rather than a saved Rdata/RDS/Rda file, the solution is very similar to the one provided by @Hong Ooi

load_obj <- function(fileName) {

  local_env = new.env()
  source(file = fileName, local = local_env)

  return(local_env[[names(local_env)[1]]])

}

my_loaded_obj = load_obj(fileName = "TestSourceFile.R")

my_loaded_obj(7)

Prints:

[1] "Value of arg is 7"

And in the separate source file TestSourceFile.R

myTestFunction = function(arg) {
  print(paste0("Value of arg is ", arg))
}

Again, this solution only works if there is exactly one file, if there are more, then it will just return one of them (probably the first, but that is not guaranteed).