What is the function of the source function in the R language?

In R language, the source function is used to execute R code stored in a file. By using the source function, you can load all the code from an R script file (with the .R extension) and execute it in the R session. This is very useful when needing to run the same code multiple times or split the code into separate files.

The syntax of the source function is as follows:

source("file.R")

In this case, file.R is the name of the file containing the R code to be executed. When this function is run, R will open the file file.R and execute all the code inside. If the file path is not a subdirectory of the current working directory, the complete file path must be provided.

For example, if we have a script file named my_script.R with some R code in it, we can use the source function to execute the file.

source("my_script.R")

This will run all the code in the my_script.R file and load its results into the current R session.