files {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.
`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.

`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.

### 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`.

### 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")
    unlink("tmp", recursive=TRUE)
    file.remove("A", "B", "C")

[Package base version 2.3.1 Index]