Programmatically load files

Question

When I want to load a file into R, what would be a way to do so programmatically (or semi programmatically) instead of just manually copy paste the path and switch \ to / so R could read it (because \ is an escape character in R)

One method mentioned by @Roland is using scan

list.files(scan(file=file(description = "clipboard"), what = "character", allowEscapes = FALSE))

Which will need modifications if the path contains a space like

"C:\Users\David Arenburg\"

Use `/` if possible. You can use `normalizePath` if you have sources that contain `\ ` — jdharrison, May 26 '14 at 13:26

jdharrison · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-26T13:41:07.260

3

normalizepath maybe what you are looking for:

> normalizePath(c(R.home(), tempdir()))
[1] "C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-3.1.0"                    
[2] "C:\\Users\\john\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\RtmpysKuFi"
> normalizePath(c(R.home(), tempdir()), winslash = '/')
[1] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.0"                 
[2] "C:/Users/john/AppData/Local/Temp/RtmpysKuFi"

Use readClipboard if you are on windows and have problems copying and pasting filepaths. For example I copy a file path from a windows folder so it is on the clip board then I can use:

> readClipboard()
[1] "C:\\Users\\john\\AppData\\Local\\Temp"

You can then use `normalizePath to correct the windows flavour of paths.

edited May 26 '14 at 13:41

answered May 26 '14 at 13:29

jdharrison

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The problem that i need to parse the path to `normalizePath` without having it stored somewhere. This is why I copy paste it from the file directory. I'm looking for something like `normalizePath(path = "C:\Users\")` which doesn't work – David Arenburg May 26 '14 at 13:32
Why can't you store the path somewhere? – Scott Ritchie May 26 '14 at 13:39
`'c:/users/david'` is valid in windows. store the directory path, `list.files`, read in data, ??? – rawr May 26 '14 at 13:45
@DavidArenburg Maybe change title to reflect that its a windows problem with copying paths from clipboard otherwise the title maybe misleading to others. – jdharrison May 26 '14 at 13:51
Changed. But i actually hoped it could a question for Linux users too to share their methods and etc – David Arenburg May 26 '14 at 13:52
@rawr, I know it valid on windows, but in order to paste that I'll need to change from `\` to `/` which is exactly what i was trying to avoid – David Arenburg May 26 '14 at 14:16
why not type it was my point. how are you going to reproduce read.clipboard? – rawr May 26 '14 at 14:18
@ScottRitchie, Because R doesn't allow to do something like temp <- "C:\Users\" – David Arenburg May 26 '14 at 17:03
@rawr see my answer below. This is some wrapper function I was looking for – David Arenburg May 27 '14 at 08:26

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 26 '14 at 19:39

0

Perhaps use choose.files() to pick the file followed by normalizePath() if you want to convert its path name to R's forward slashes.

answered May 26 '14 at 19:39

lawyeR

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I'm familiar with `choose.files()`, but I don't want to do this manually every time i'm open the script. – David Arenburg May 26 '14 at 19:41

Programmatically load files

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