Are R objects dumped using `dump` readable cross-platform?

Question

I am considering replacing some uses of save, which exports .Rdata files, with dump, which produces text representations of R objects.

Is it safe to assume that files created using dump will be readable by R installed on different operating systems (e.g. linux, mac, windows)?

Answer 1

Even those from save() are readable on all platforms -- I would stick with that format if your goal is cross-platform use rather than cross-application use (in which case you need a format read by all applications...).