[Rd] list.files(recursive=T) does not return directory names

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Hi,

the R.utils package has a function listDirectory() that returns the 
directory names too.  (I've made some changes to the function recently, 
which is not in the CRAN version, so get it from http://www.braju.com/R/ 
instead.)

The package also has isFile() and isDirectory() to test if a pathname 
refers to an existing file and directory, respectively.  These are not 
"vectorized" (yet), so you have to call them with sapply() if you have 
many pathnames, e.g.

 > path <- file.path(R.home(), "share")
 > ld <- listDirectory(path, recursive=TRUE, fullNames=TRUE)
 > ld[sapply(ld, isDirectory)]
  [1] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/licenses"
  [2] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/locale"
  [3] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/make"
...
[27] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/perl/R"
[28] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/perl/Text"
 > ld[sapply(ld, isFile)]
  [1] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/licenses/Artistic"
  [2] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/licenses/BSD"
  [3] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/licenses/GPL-2"
...
[50] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/texmf/ts1aett.fd"
[51] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\rw2011pat/share/texmf/upquote.sty"

Hope this helps.

BTW, this package also have functions to read Windows Shortcuts files 
(*.lnk) and the function filePath("data", "raw", expandLinks="any") will 
recognize if any part is a shortcut to another directory, e.g. data.lnk 
links to another directory containing subdirectory "raw" (and directory 
data/ does not exist).  (filePath() also not vectorized). 
listDirectory() does not follow Windows Shortcuts.

Henrik


bill at insightful.com wrote:
> list.files() (and dir()) don't appear to return names of
> directories when one uses the recursive=T argument.  E.g.,
>   > dir(file.path(R.home(),"library"), pattern="^R$", recursive=T)
>   [1] "Malmig/help/R"
> but the unix find commmand finds lots of R directories
>   > z <- system(paste("find", file.path(R.home(),"library"), "-name R"), intern=T)
>   > length(z)
>   [1] 665
>   > file.info(z[1:3])[,1:3]
>                                             size isdir mode
>   /dept/devel/sw/R/R.linux/R/library/aCGH/R 4096  TRUE 2755
>   /dept/devel/sw/R/R.linux/R/library/RBGL/R 4096  TRUE 2755
>   /dept/devel/sw/R/R.linux/R/library/XML/R  4096  TRUE 2755
> 
> The help file is silent on this behavior.  I am writing
> an emulation of these for functions for Splus and was
> wondering about 3 things.
> 
> a) Is this behavior intended?
> 
> b) Is there an easy way to get the names of all directories
> under a given one?
> 
> b) I would like to add an argument to list.files() to specify
> that I'd like the names of only non-directories, only directories,
> or both.  I've tentatively called this argument "type" (following
> the unix find command) and the acceptable values are "files",
> "directories", and "all" (or any abbreviation).  Symbolic links,
> fifos, etc. might be nice, but I don't want to fill the code
> with unixisms or tempt folks to use them.  Would adding
> 	type = "files","directories","all"
> to list.files and dir conflict with any plans for R's list.files
> or dir?
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bill Dunlap
> Insightful Corporation
> bill at insightful dot com
> 360-428-8146
>  "Formerly known as MathSoft, Insightful Corporation provides analytical
>  solutions leveraging S-PLUS, StatServer and consulting services."
> 
>  "All statements in this message represent the opinions of the author and do
>  not necessarily reflect Insightful Corporation policy or position."
> 
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