system-independent path for source()

That looks good, except the hard disk name should be kept separate from 
the user-specified path. Otherwise, a call from MacOS that uses an 
absolute path will not work on UNIX.

I suggest modifying your file.path interface:
file.path<-function (..., fsep = .Platform$file.sep,absolute=FALSE, 
hard.disk.name = "C") {}

If .Platform$OS.type=="mac" and absolute, then hard.disk.name would be 
added to the beginning of the path.

This way, file.path("Users","thomas",absolute=TRUE, hard.disk.name = 
"Macintosh HD") would work for both MacOS and UNIX. I think this 
interface could also be made to work with Windows.

On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

All contributions welcome, Thomas!

This seems to be a bit better than the current version, and I'll add it

 file.path<-function (..., fsep = .Platform$file.sep,absolute=FALSE) {
    rval<-paste(..., sep = fsep)
    if (xor(absolute,.Platform$OS.type=="mac"))
        rval<-paste("",rval,sep=fsep)
    rval
 }

so now I can do
  file.path("Macintosh HD","Users","thomas",absolute=TRUE)
or
  file.path("Users","thomas")
for a relative path.

The real question is what to do about disks. In Windows you need the 
disk
name to find files on other disks but on the Mac you seem to need the
disk name even to find the root of the current disk.

It could be taken from getwd() but that seems to make file.path() a lot
more complicated and less portable.

	-thomas

http://www.mcg.edu/research/biostat/bickel.html

David R. Bickel, PhD
Assistant Professor
Medical College of Georgia
Office of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
1120 Fifteenth St., AE-3037
Augusta, GA 30912-4900

Tel.: 706-721-4697; Fax: 706-721-6294
E-mail: dbickel at mail.mcg.edu or bickel at prueba.info

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