[R-pkg-devel] Writing to files without altering working directory in R package

[Jarrett Phillips]

Hello,

My R package has a function with an argument to specify whether numerical
results should be outputted to a CSV file.

CRAN policy stipulates verbatim that

Packages should not write in the user’s home filespace (including
clipboards), nor anywhere else on the file system apart from the R
session’s temporary directory (or during installation in the location
pointed to by TMPDIR: and such usage should be cleaned up). Installing into
the system’s R installation (e.g., scripts to its bin directory) is not
allowed.

I know I should use tempdir() within my package function, but I've not seen
any examples on how this is best done within existing R packages.

Within my package documentation examples for my function, I have the lines:

 \dontshow{.oldwd <- setwd(tempdir())}

... some R code ...

\dontshow{setwd(.oldwd)}

but I have been informed that this is not the accepted way.

Any ideas from the community on how do do this properly?


Thanks for the help!

Cheers,

Jarrett

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