files and directories

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
knitr::opts_chunk$set(message = FALSE)

http://theautomatic.net/2018/07/11/manipulate-files-r/
https://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su07/R/html/base/html/files.html

get and change working dir

getwd()
setwd("/path/to/wd/")

using “here” package

library(here)
here::here()
here::set_here()

check if files, dirs exists

file.exists("test.txt") # [1] FALSE
dir.exists("test_dir") # [1] TRUE

create files, dirs

dir.create("test_dir")
file.create(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"), overwrite = TRUE)
file.create(file.path("test_dir", "test.csv"))

# create a whole bunch of files
file.path("test_dir", paste0("file", 1:5, ".txt"))
sapply(file.path("test_dir", paste0("file", 1:5, ".txt")), file.create)

edit file

file.edit(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"))

delete files

file.remove(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"))
dir.create(file.path("test_dir", "to_be_removed"))
unlink(file.path("test_dir", "to_be_removed"), recursive = TRUE)

copy files, dirs

dir.create(file.path("test_dir", "inner_dir"))
file.copy(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"), file.path("test_dir", "inner_dir"), overwrite = TRUE)

symlink

file.symlink(from, to)

list files in dir

list.files(file.path("test_dir"))
list.files(file.path("test_dir"), recursive = TRUE) # lists files in inner_dir
list.files(file.path("test_dir"), recursive = TRUE, full.names = TRUE) # get full path, starting from current dir

# use pattern to subset list.files() results
list.files(file.path("test_dir"), pattern = ".csv")

get file info

file.info(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"))
#                   size isdir mode               mtime               ctime               atime uid gid   uname grname
# test_dir/test.txt    0 FALSE  644 2020-05-04 17:46:56 2020-05-04 17:46:56 2020-05-04 17:52:52 501  20 minghan  staff

file.mtime(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt")) # [1] "2020-05-04 17:46:56 EDT"
# file.ctime(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt")) # no such function...
file.info(file.path("test_dir", "test.txt"))$ctime # [1] "2020-05-04 17:46:56 EDT"

get file basename

basename(file.path("test_dir", "test.csv"))

get dir name of a file

dirname(file.path("test_dir", "test.csv"))

get file extension

library(tools)
file_ext(file.path("test_dir", "test.csv"))

open a GUI window to select file

# file.choose()

move a file

# install.packages("filesstrings")
library(filesstrings)
file.move(file.path("test_dir", "file1.txt"), file.path("test_dir", "inner_dir"))

EOF