[R] Reading file from remote location or network drive.

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This is an FAQ (both in the main FAQ and the rw-FAQ)

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-do-file-names-work-in-Windows_003f
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/rw-FAQ.html#R-can_0027t-find-my-file

You may find it easier to map your network drives: most users do.

See also ?Quotes in R.

On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, Harsh wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to pull data from a network drive on a windows machine. The
> location is read into a string <rem> and then used later with a data
> input command.
>
>> rem<- "\\192.192.192.3\Shared\iris1.csv"
> Warning messages:
> 1: '\S' is an unrecognized escape in a character string
> 2: '\i' is an unrecognized escape in a character string
> 3: unrecognized escapes removed from "\\192.168.16.3\Shared\iris1.csv"
>
> When using a data input operation
>
> datafile<- read.csv(rem,header= T, sep = ",")
> Error in file(file, "r") : cannot open the connection
> In addition: Warning message:
> In file(file, "r") :
>  cannot open file '\192.192.192.3Sharediris1.csv': No such file or directory
>
> I have tried to use strsplit to split on "\\"
>
>> strsplit(rem,"\\")
> Error in strsplit(rem, "\\") : invalid split pattern '\'
> In addition: Warning message:
> In strsplit(rem, "\\") : regcomp error:  'Trailing backslash'
>
> Also, I tried to split to extract all characters and this is what I obtained.
>
>> print(strsplit(rem,""))
> [[1]]
> [1] "\\" "1"  "9"  "2"  "."  "1"  "6"  "8"  "."  "1"  "6"  "."  "3"  "S"  "h"
> [16] "a"  "r"  "e"  "d"  "i"  "r"  "i"  "s"  "1"  "."  "c"  "s"  "v"
>
>
> The problem is that, I cannot check for each character and if "\",
> convert it to "/".
>
> Ofcourse, if I were to assign
>
>> rem<- "//192.192.192.3/Shared/iris1.csv"
>
> Then rem can be used successfully
>> datafile<- read.csv(rem,header= T, sep = ",")
>
> Alternately, I would like to know, if the network drive were to have a
> username and password,
> how would I be able to pass those parameters in read.csv below
>
> datafile<- read.csv("\\192.168.16.3\Shared\iris1.csv username:user
> password:user",header= T, sep = ",")

Clearly not, do read the help page as requested.

>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Harsh Singhal
> Mu Sigma Decision Systems Inc.,
> Chicago, IL
> USA
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595