[R] Problem setting TMPDIR on the fly

[Peter Dalgaard]

"Benjamin Lloyd-Hughes" <Benjamin.Lloyd-Hughes at benfieldgroup.com> writes:

> Hi folks,
> 
>  
> 
> I'm having a spot of bother with tempdir().  If I set the environment
> variable TMPDIR in my shell prior to invoking R it works as expected:
> 
>  
> 
> > Sys.getenv("TMPDIR")
> 
>               TMPDIR 
> 
> "/eurotempest/tmp/R" 
> 
> > tempdir()
> 
> [1] "/eurotempest/tmp/R/Rtmp0xY4XD"
> 
>  
> 
> However if I don't set it prior to entry, but attempt to set it from
> within the current session, the change is not detected/respected:
> 
>  
> 
> > Sys.getenv("TMPDIR")
> 
> TMPDIR 
> 
>     "" 
> 
> > Sys.putenv(TMPDIR = "/eurotempest/tmp/R/")
> 
> > Sys.getenv("TMPDIR")
> 
>                TMPDIR 
> 
> "/eurotempest/tmp/R/" 
> 
> > tempdir()
> 
> [1] "/tmp/Rtmp9chsNX"
> 
>  
> 
> Any ideas?

You're not supposed to do that. There is one and only one tempdir per
R session. This is used for storing stuff which R expects to be able to
find again later, so it would be a bad thing just to switch it out.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
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