Querying the path separator?

Unfortunately, no.  .Platform$file.sep on a windows box is the "/".
For this DOS program it needs to be the "classic" backslash.

Ok, we'll hack this a bit (query the platform and test if it is
windows), but now I'm running into escape character problems.  Given:

files1="*.las"
files1_formatted=file.path(getwd(),files1)
files1_formatted
[1] "X:/pathto/*.las"

I want files1_formatted to read:
"X:\pathto\*.las"

Using:
sub("/","\",files1_formatted)
Doesn't work (in fact, its not a complete statement -- I assume since
its waiting for something to follow the / ).  What's the trick with
this?

--j

Jonathan Greenberg wrote:

The problem is that I'm trying to create a path to use with a system()
call, and the command window will not work with the forward slash,
only with the standard backslash. ?I do understand that within R it
will work with either way, but not via the system call. ?I'm trying to
create a "generic" system() call that will work with an external
executable that is available on both windows and unix machines.

Would .Platform$file.sep help you?
I can't test this.

Berend

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Jonathan A. Greenberg, PhD
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