[Rd] Non-recursive way to remove empty directory on Windows?

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
>>>>>     on Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:47:07 +0100 writes:

>>>>> William Dunlap <wdunlap at tibco.com>
>>>>>     on Thu, 29 Nov 2012 02:36:54 +0000 writes:

    >>> (even worse, path may contain '..' or
    >>> likewise from a list.files(all.names=TRUE) call)

    >> Would anyone's code break if "." and ".." were never in the output of
    >> list.files() (or dir())?  I find it tedious to skip them
    >> whenever doing anything recursive in the file system.  They are
    >> not in the output of the unix find command and no one misses them
    >> there.

    > At first, I've tended to agree with your implicit proposal.
    > I wouldn't be suprised if someone's code broke from such a
    > change, but then I think "Some One" gets what (s)he deserves  ...

    > But I'm less sure now that I've looked into the issue in more
    > details:
    > If you use 

    > (1)   list.files(*, all.files=TRUE)     # sic!  'all.names' does not exist

    > you implicitly say  'recursive=FALSE' , where

    > (2)   list.files(*, recursive=TRUE, ...)

    > implicitly contains  'include.dirs=FALSE'
    > on which the help page says

    > include.dirs: logical.  Should subdirectory names be included in
    > recursive listings?  (There always are in non-recursive ones).

    > {with a typo   s/There/They/  which I've corrected just now}

    > Hence, call  (2)   always excludes  "." and ".."

    > Would you reall see the need for an option to exclude "."
    > and ".." also from the non-recursive calls?

well,... and inspite of the above question,
as I know Bill Dunlap's good judgement and as it appeared to be
nicely implementable, I've still provided such an option now (R-devel only) :

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r61184 | maechler | 2012-11-30 12:47:23 +0100 (Fri, 30 Nov 2012) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M doc/NEWS.Rd
   M src/library/base/R/files.R
   M src/library/base/man/list.files.Rd
   M src/main/names.c
   M src/main/platform.c

list.files() gains a new optional argument "no.."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

One might discuss if we should change the current
back-compatible default 
from  'no.. = FALSE'  to  'no.. = TRUE'

and someone may want to try to do that in R-devel *and* check
all of CRAN (and Bioconductor ?) to see if some package code
breaks because of such a change...

    > Martin Maechler,  ETH Zurich

    >> Bill Dunlap
    >> Spotfire, TIBCO Software
    >> wdunlap tibco.com


    >>> -----Original Message-----
    >>> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
    >>> Of Henrik Bengtsson
    >>> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 6:25 PM
    >>> To: R-devel
    >>> Subject: [Rd] Non-recursive way to remove empty directory on Windows?
    >>> 
    >>> Hi,
    >>> 
    >>> file.remove(path) will remove an empty directory "on most Unix
    >>> platforms", but not on Windows, cf. help("file.remove").  A workaround
    >>> for Windows is then unlink(path, recursive=TRUE).  However, unless
    >>> you're really careful and make sure 'path' is not empty, you may
    >>> delete more than you wish (even worse, path may contain '..' or
    >>> likewise from a list.files(all.names=TRUE) call).  Is there another
    >>> *non-recursive* way to delete a single empty directory on Windows
    >>> (without turning to system() calls)?
    >>> 
    >>> Thanks,
    >>> 
    >>> Henrik

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