R File Manipulation

Posted on  May 30, 2017  in  R  by  Amo Chen  ‐ 1 min read

This post is one of the R language learning notes, focusing on file manipulation.

Viewing the Working Directory

> getwd()
[1] "/Users/username"

wd stands for working directory.

Setting the Working Directory

> setwd('/Users/username/')

Viewing All Files in the Working Directory

> dir()
 [1] "example-1.csv"
 [2] "example-2.csv"
 ...

Creating a New File

> file.create("example-3.csv")
[1] TRUE

Copying a File

> file.copy("example-3.csv", "foo.R")
[1] TRUE

Renaming a File

> file.rename("foo.R", "bar.R")
[1] TRUE

Deleting a File

> file.remove("bar.R")
[1] TRUE

Checking if a File Exists

> file.exists("test.R")
[1] FALSE

Path Joining

> file.path('/User/foo', 'bar')
[1] "/User/foo/bar"

Displaying File Information

> file.info('example.csv')
                size isdir mode               mtime               ctime               atime uid gid uname grname
example.csv 69112020 FALSE  644 2017-06-02 18:30:17 2017-06-02 18:30:17 2017-06-03 10:53:30 501  20  user  staff

Creating a Directory

> dir.create("folder")

To create directories recursively, set the recursive parameter to TRUE, similar to the Linux command mkdir -p.

# mkdir -p
> dir.create(file.path("folder", "subfolder"), recursive=TRUE)

Deleting a Directory

> unlink("folder", recursive = TRUE)

recursive = TRUE means to recursively delete all files under the directory.