Cannot use dput for data.table in R

Question

I have following data.table for which I cannot use output of dput command to recreate it:

> ddt
   Unit Anything index new
1:    A      3.4     1   1
2:           


        

Answer 1

I have also found this behavior rather annoying. So I have created my own dput function that ignores the .internal.selfref attribute.

dput <- function (x, file = "", control = c("keepNA", "keepInteger", 
                                    "showAttributes")) 
{
  if (is.character(file)) 
    if (nzchar(file)) {
      file <- file(file, "wt")
      on.exit(close(file))
    }
  else file <- stdout()
  opts <- .deparseOpts(control)
  # adding these three lines for data.tables
  if (is.data.table(x)) {
    setattr(x, '.internal.selfref', NULL)
  }
  if (isS4(x)) {
    clx <- class(x)
    cat("new(\"", clx, "\"\n", file = file, sep = "")
    for (n in .slotNames(clx)) {
      cat("    ,", n, "= ", file = file)
      dput(slot(x, n), file = file, control = control)
    }
    cat(")\n", file = file)
    invisible()
  }
  else .Internal(dput(x, file, opts))
}