file path

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?

f <- "a?b.txt"
file.path("e:",f)

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/

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/

f <- "a?b.txt"
file.path("e:",f)

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/

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/

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

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/

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

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

On 09/05/2012 4:03 AM, Wincent 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?

I would just try to create the file, and if you fail, it's not legitimate.
?Alternatively, you could look at the tests that R uses when it checks a
package: ?we try to keep filenames portable to all operating systems. ?The
rules seem to be strictest for vignettes:

? ? ? ?## we specify ASCII filenames starting with a letter in R-exts
? ? ? ?## do this in a locale-independent way.
? ? ? ?OK <-
grep("^[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz][ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789._-]+$",
vignettes)

Duncan Murdoch

From the answers provided by this mailing list, it seems not easy to

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/

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

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

--
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.

Thanks for the suggestion. The file name in my case is Chinese, which
makes the regular expression less useful.

Anyway, I would like to pose a followup question.
I have a character string of "ABC\D", and want to strip away the "\"
and want a returned character of "ABCD". How can I do it with gsub() ?

Thanks again.

On 9 May 2012 22:40, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 09/05/2012 4:03 AM, Wincent 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?

I would just try to create the file, and if you fail, it's not legitimate.
 Alternatively, you could look at the tests that R uses when it checks a
package:  we try to keep filenames portable to all operating systems.  The
rules seem to be strictest for vignettes:

       ## we specify ASCII filenames starting with a letter in R-exts
       ## do this in a locale-independent way.
       OK <-
grep("^[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz][ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789._-]+$",
vignettes)

Duncan Murdoch

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

This works on Mac:

str <- "abc/d"
gsub("/", "", str)

Return:
"abcd"


Sent from my iPhone

On May 14, 2012, at 4:28 AM, Wincent <ronggui.huang at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. The file name in my case is Chinese, which
makes the regular expression less useful.

Anyway, I would like to pose a followup question.
I have a character string of "ABC\D", and want to strip away the "\"
and want a returned character of "ABCD". How can I do it with gsub() ?

Thanks again.

On 9 May 2012 22:40, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 09/05/2012 4:03 AM, Wincent 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?

I would just try to create the file, and if you fail, it's not legitimate.
?Alternatively, you could look at the tests that R uses when it checks a
package: ?we try to keep filenames portable to all operating systems. ?The
rules seem to be strictest for vignettes:

? ? ? ?## we specify ASCII filenames starting with a letter in R-exts
? ? ? ?## do this in a locale-independent way.
? ? ? ?OK <-
grep("^[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz][ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789._-]+$",
vignettes)

Duncan Murdoch

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

Emm, my bad.
I meant str <- "abc\d".
Any ideas?

On 14-05-2012, at 12:07, Wincent wrote:

Emm, my bad.
I meant str <- "abc\d".
Any ideas?

gsub("\\\\", "", str)