[R] Construct a File Path: File Path Unknown

William Dunlap wdunlap at tibco.com
Thu Aug 25 22:25:15 CEST 2011


Try using normalizePath("foo.pdf") after creating
the file.  It should return an absolute path to
an existing file.

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Tyler Rinker
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 12:43 PM
> To: jvadams at usgs.gov
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Construct a File Path: File Path Unknown
> 
> 
> Jean, Thank you.  It's slow but it works. dir("C:/", pattern="plotrix.pdf", full.names=T,
> ignore.case=T, recursive=T)   Does anyone have a faster way? If it helps using:
> shell.exec("search-ms://query=plotrix.pdf")    utilizes windows's search bar to find the file (this is
> quick), however it opens a screen that finds the file rather than providing me with the search path.
> For a look at what that looks like on a windows machine click here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
> US/windows7/products/features/windows-search I'm thinking there's a way to use this method to extract
> the path even faster than dir(). TylerTo: tyler_rinker at hotmail.com
> CC: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Construct a File Path: File Path Unknown
> From: jvadams at usgs.gov
> Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:19:37 -0500
> 
> 
> 
> Try the dir() function.
> 
> 
> 
> ?dir
> 
> 
> 
> # for example
> 
> dir("c:/", pattern="foo.pdf",
> full.names=T, ignore.case=T, recursive=T)
> 
> 
> 
> Jean
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tyler Rinker wrote on 08/25/2011 11:54:28 AM:
> 
> >
> 
> > I am not a programmer and am self-taught so I may lack the
> 
> > language to ask this appropriately (perhaps why an rseek search was
> 
> 
> > unfruitful).
> 
> >
> 
> > Let's say I saved a file to my desktop called foo.pdf.  Then
> I want
> 
> > R to return the file path of
> 
> > foo.pdf (pretend I don't know the location(path) of foo.pdf).
> 
> >
> 
> > Question: How would I get R to return the unknown file path for
> 
> > foo.pdf.
> 
> >
> 
> > I hypothesize that the find find.package() function code contains
> 
> > the secret for doing this but am unable to parse out the snippet to
> do so.
> 
> >
> 
> > I attempted file.path("foo.pdf")
> 
> >
> 
> > which R returns [1] "foo.pdf"  #not what I want
> 
> >
> 
> > ===========================================
> 
> >
> 
> > R version 2.14 beta
> 
> >
> 
> > Windows 7
> 
> >
> 
> > Reproducible code is not appropriate for this query
> 
> >
> 
> > ______________________________________________
> 
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> 
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> 
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> 
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



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