Set working directory by dragging text file onto R shortcut? [WinXP, unfortunately]

Hi R-helpers,

I must use WinXP at work, and I'm missing a particular feature that's
available in R on my Mac at home...

In WinXP I would like to launch R by dragging and releasing a text
file on top of the R shortcut on my desktop. Then, I would like the
working directory to be automatically set to the location of that text
file.

That's what works in MacOS, but I can't figure out if it's possible in WinXP.

Any ideas? I'd appreciate it...

Thanks, Mark Na

PS What I do now is make a new R shortcut for each project, store that
shortcut in the directory containing that project's datafiles and R
programs (which are in text files), and set the "Start in" value to
that directory...but this has to be set up uniquely for each
project...

You can execute a script on startup as follows:

1.  Put the script into a file somewhere, e.g. c:/temp/test.R

2.  Edit your shortcut to R to set the command to something like this:

path\to\Rgui.exe  R_PROFILE_USER=c:/temp/test.R --args

Now your script will execute on startup, and you can have it change 
directory, load a file, whatever you want.  For example, this changes 
directory to the directory of the file dropped on the shortcut, then 
opens the file for editing:

Contents of test.R:

  filename <- commandArgs(TRUE)
  if (length(filename)) {
    setwd(dirname(filename))
    utils::file.edit(filename)
  }

You can make it as involved as you like, e.g. looking at the file 
extension to determine what to do with it, etc.

Duncan Murdoch