files                  package:base                  R Documentation

File and Directory Manipulation

Description:

     These functions provide a low-level interface to the computer's
     file system.

Usage:

     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)

Arguments:

..., file1, file2, from, to: character vectors, containing file names
          or paths.

    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'.

Details:

     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.  (Here 'exists' is in the sense
     of the system's 'stat' call: a file will be reported as existing
     only if you have the permissions needed by 'stat'. Existence can
     also be checked by 'file.access', which might use different
     permissions and so obtain a different result. Note that the
     existence of a file does not imply that it is readable: for that
     use 'file.access'.)

     'file.remove' attempts to remove the files named in its argument.

     'file.rename' attempts to rename a single file.

     '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'.  Trailing path separators are removed.

Value:

     '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.

Author(s):

     Ross Ihaka, Brian Ripley

See Also:

     'file.info', 'file.access', 'file.path', 'file.show',
     'list.files', 'unlink', 'basename', 'path.expand'.

     'file_test'.

Examples:

     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")
     setwd("tmp")
     file.remove("B")
     file.symlink(file.path("..", c("A", "B")), ".")
     setwd("..")
     unlink("tmp", recursive=TRUE)
     file.remove("A", "B", "C")

