tempfile {base} | R Documentation

## Create Names for Temporary Files

### Description

`tempfile` returns a vector of character strings which can be used as names for temporary files.

### Usage

    tempfile(pattern = "file", tmpdir = tempdir())
    tempdir()

### Arguments

`pattern` | a non-empty character vector giving the initial part of the name.
`tmpdir` | a non-empty character vector giving the directory name

### Details

If `pattern` has length greater than one then the result is of the same length giving a temporary file name for each component of `pattern`.

The names are very likely to be unique among calls to `tempfile` in an R session and across simultaneous R sessions. The filenames are guaranteed not to be currently in use.

The file name is made of the pattern and a random suffix in hex. By default, the filenames will be in the directory given by `tempdir()`. This will be a subdirectory of the temporary directory found by the following rule. The environment variables `TMPDIR`, `TMP` and `TEMP` are checked in turn and the first found which points to a writable directory is used: if none succeeds the value of `R_USER` (see `Rconsole`) is used. If the path to the directory contains a space in any of the components, the path returned will use the shortnames version of the path.

### Value

For `tempfile` a character vector giving the names of possible (temporary) files. Note that no files are generated by `tempfile`.
For `tempdir`, the path of the per-session temporary directory.
Both will use backslash as the path separator.

### References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

### See Also

`unlink` for deleting files.

### Examples

    tempfile(c("ab", "a b c"))   # give file name with spaces in!

    tempdir() # working on all platforms with quite platform dependent result

[Package base version 2.3.1 Index]