[R] file path

[Wincent]

No, but make.names only makes syntactically valid names of R object.

I think I have mentioned what I did in the first email, although no
concrete example was provided. Let me explain a bit. I have a text
file like this,

Title:AA?
Content: 1xxxxxx1
------------
Title:BA
Content: 2xxxxxx2

I want to read the file in, process it and export it into two separate
files. 1. d:/output/AA.txt with content of 1xxxxxx1, and 2.
d:/output/BA with content of 2xxxxxx2.

The first file name is AA because I know "AA?" is not a valid file
name in Windows and ? is removed. However, there are lots of files and
it will be convenient if I can convert any invalid file name (like
"AA?") into a valid file name (like "AA") automatically.

>From the answers provided by this mailing list, it seems not easy to
write a function to construct valid file names because what is a valid
file name depends on the OS and prior knowledge is needed.

Best

On 10 May 2012 20:53, jim holtman <jholtman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has any mentioned
>
> ?make.names
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Wincent <ronggui.huang at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As I said, the file name is derived automatically from text processing.
>> Thanks all the same.
>>
>> On 10 May 2012 20:35, Upton, Stephen (Steve) (CIV) <scupton at nps.edu> wrote:
>>> Why not just construct a valid file name and use that in cat? You can then use
>>> file.path to join paths together if you want to write to a specific location,
>>> as in your example.
>>>
>>> steve
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Wincent
>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 11:15 AM
>>> To: Tal Galili
>>> Cc: r help
>>> Subject: Re: [R] file path
>>>
>>> Hmm, I don't think it gives what I want.
>>>
>>> For example, I assign a file name to f,
>>>> f <- "a?b.txt"
>>>> file.path("e:",f)
>>> [1] "e:/a?b.txt"
>>>
>>> The resultant character is not accepted as a file name by Windows OS.
>>>
>>> On 9 May 2012 20:32, Tal Galili <tal.galili at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Wincent,
>>>> Have a look at:
>>>> ?file.path
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------Contact
>>>> Details:-------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Contact me: Tal.Galili at gmail.com |  972-52-7275845 Read me:
>>>> www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) |
>>>> www.r-statistics.com (English)
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> ------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Wincent <ronggui.huang at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear all, is there any function to assert whether a file path is
>>>>> legitimate, and to convert any potential file path to a legitimate
>>>>> file path?
>>>>>
>>>>> I automate a batch of files and write them to plain text files with
>>>>> cat(). The file argument of cat() is generated automatically which
>>>>> may contain characters such as ? < >, unacceptable in Windows OS.
>>>>> What I do at this moment is to strip such characters off with gsub().
>>>>> Is there any direct way to make legitimate file path without detailed
>>>>> knowledge about the naming rule specific to a OS?
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Wincent Ronggui HUANG
>>>>> Sociology Department of Fudan University PhD of City University of
>>>>> Hong Kong http://homepage.fudan.edu.cn/rghuang/cv/
>>>>>
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Wincent Ronggui HUANG
>>> Sociology Department of Fudan University PhD of City University of Hong Kong
>>> http://homepage.fudan.edu.cn/rghuang/cv/
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Wincent Ronggui HUANG
>> Sociology Department of Fudan University
>> PhD of City University of Hong Kong
>> http://homepage.fudan.edu.cn/rghuang/cv/
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>
>
> --
> Jim Holtman
> Data Munger Guru
>
> What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
> Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.



-- 
Wincent Ronggui HUANG
Sociology Department of Fudan University
PhD of City University of Hong Kong
http://homepage.fudan.edu.cn/rghuang/cv/