| files {base} | R Documentation |
These functions provide a low-level interface to the computer's file system.
file.create(...) file.exists(...) file.remove(...) file.rename(from, to) file.append(file1, file2) file.copy(from, to, overwrite = FALSE) file.symlink(from, to) dir.create(path, showWarnings = TRUE, recursive = FALSE)
..., file1, file2, from, to |
character vectors, containing file names. |
path |
a character vector containing a single path name. |
overwrite |
logical; should the destination files be overwritten? |
showWarnings |
logical; should the warnings on failure be shown? |
recursive |
logical: should elements of the path other than the
last be created? If true, like Unix's mkdir -p. |
The ... arguments are concatenated to form one character
string: you can specify the files separately or as one vector.
All of these functions expand path names: see path.expand.
file.create creates files with the given names if they
do not already exist and truncates them if they do.
file.exists returns a logical vector indicating whether
the files named by its argument exist.
file.remove attempts to remove the files named in its
argument.
file.rename attempts to rename a single file.
On Windows 9x/ME rename is not atomic, so it is possible that
to will be deleted but from will not be renamed.
file.append attempts to append the files named by its
second argument to those named by its first. The R subscript
recycling rule is used to align names given in vectors
of different lengths.
file.copy works in a similar way to file.append but with
the arguments in the natural order for copying. Copying to existing
destination files is skipped unless overwrite = TRUE.
The to argument can specify a single existing directory.
file.symlink makes symbolic links on those Unix-like platforms
which support them. The to argument can specify a single
existing directory.
dir.create creates the last element of the path, unless
recursive = TRUE. As from R 2.2.1 trailing path separators
are ignored.
On Windows drives are allowed in the path specification, and unless
the path is rooted will be interpreted relative to the current
directory on that drive.
dir.create and file.rename return a logical,
true for success.
The remaining functions return a logical vector indicating which
operation succeeded for each of the files attempted.
dir.create will return failure if the directory already exists.
Ross Ihaka, Brian Ripley
file.info, file.access, file.path,
file.show, list.files,
unlink, basename, path.expand.
cat("file A\n", file="A")
cat("file B\n", file="B")
file.append("A", "B")
file.create("A")
file.append("A", rep("B", 10))
if(interactive()) file.show("A")
file.copy("A", "C")
dir.create("tmp")
file.copy(c("A", "B"), "tmp")
list.files("tmp")
unlink("tmp", recursive=TRUE)
file.remove("A", "B", "C")