[R] Extracting File Basename without Extension

[Marc Schwartz]

on 01/09/2009 09:00 AM Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 1/8/2009 9:10 PM, Gundala Viswanath wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> The basename() function returns the extension also:
>>
>>> myfile <- "path1/path2/myoutput.txt"
>>> basename(myfile)
>> [1] "myoutput.txt"
>>
>>
>> Is there any other function where it just returns
>> plain base:
>>
>> "myoutput"
>>
>> i.e. without 'txt'
> 
> I'm curious about something: does "file extension" have a standard
> definition?  Most (all?  I haven't tried them all) of the solutions
> presented in this thread would return an empty string for the "plain
> base" if given the filename ".bashrc".
> 
> Windows (where file extensions really mean something), though reluctant
> to create such a file, appears to agree that the extension is bashrc,
> even though to me it appears clear that that file has no extension.

Duncan,

That is going to be highly OS and even OS version specific. More
information here:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename_extension

There are relevant standard extensions for standard file formats:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats

but that does not guarantee that user created filenames will adhere to
them, especially for text files.

As you note, filenames beginning with a '.' will be common on
Unixen/Linuxen as otherwise normally hidden system/config files. Such
files would actually create problems if attempted to be opened on
Windows with certain applications and I have even seen problems with
such files when using SMB under Linux to access files on a server.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz