R Language Pipe operators (%>% and others) Creating side effects with %T>%
Example
Some functions in R produce a side effect (i.e. saving, printing, plotting, etc) and do not always return a meaningful or desired value.
%T>% (tee operator) allows you to forward a value into a side-effect-producing function while keeping the original lhs value intact. In other words: the tee operator works like %>%, except the return values is lhs itself, and not the result of the rhs function/expression.
Example: Create, pipe, write, and return an object. If %>% were used in place of %T>% in this example, then the variable all_letters would contain NULL rather than the value of the sorted object.
all_letters <- c(letters, LETTERS) %>%
sort %T>%
write.csv(file = "all_letters.csv")
read.csv("all_letters.csv") %>% head()
# x
# 1 a
# 2 A
# 3 b
# 4 B
# 5 c
# 6 C
Warning: Piping an unnamed object to save() will produce an object named . when loaded into the workspace with load(). However, a workaround using a helper function is possible (which can also be written inline as an anonymous function).
all_letters <- c(letters, LETTERS) %>%
sort %T>%
save(file = "all_letters.RData")
load("all_letters.RData", e <- new.env())
get("all_letters", envir = e)
# Error in get("all_letters", envir = e) : object 'all_letters' not found
get(".", envir = e)
# [1] "a" "A" "b" "B" "c" "C" "d" "D" "e" "E" "f" "F" "g" "G" "h" "H" "i" "I" "j" "J"
# [21] "k" "K" "l" "L" "m" "M" "n" "N" "o" "O" "p" "P" "q" "Q" "r" "R" "s" "S" "t" "T"
# [41] "u" "U" "v" "V" "w" "W" "x" "X" "y" "Y" "z" "Z"
# Work-around
save2 <- function(. = ., name, file = stop("'file' must be specified")) {
assign(name, .)
call_save <- call("save", ... = name, file = file)
eval(call_save)
}
all_letters <- c(letters, LETTERS) %>%
sort %T>%
save2("all_letters", "all_letters.RData")
