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Strange behaviour of setwd/getwd

8 messages · Duncan Murdoch, Rui Barradas, Berend Hasselman +2 more

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I've found the following strange behaviour R (RStudio) which has been  
confirmed by another user in RGui.


Inside a script I want to set two variables:

default.wd = getwd()
tmp.wd = setwd(choose.dir())

After choosing tmp.wd the value of default.wd is shown in Workspace, but  
getwd() is giving back the correct string of tmp.wd.
  Is there a workaround for the problem?

I'm working on RStudio 0.96.228 and R 2.15.2.

Regards
Markus
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On 02/11/2012 12:57 PM, Markus Holotta wrote:
It's not clear what the problem is from your post.  As the help page 
says, both default.wd and tmp.wd should be the same after executing 
those two lines.  If you want to store both the old and new directories, 
you should do it like this:

old.wd <- setwd(choose.dir())
new.wd <- getwd()

Duncan Murdoch
#
Hello,

Just to be complete, in my first answer I forgot to mention your 
'default.wd'.
There's no need to call getwd() to do what you want.


tmp.wd <- choose.dir()
default.wd <- setwd(tmp.wd)


Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas
Em 02-11-2012 16:57, Markus Holotta escreveu:
#
Maybe my question was not clear enough:
default.wd is the working dir defined in the RStudio options.
In my script I want to change it temporarily to another directory by  
setwd(choose.dir()) and set it back to the default.wd before calling  
another script. But after choosing the new directory tmp.wd shows the same  
path in the workspace as default.wd. Calling getwd() shows the correct  
path.
Hope its clearer now.


Am 02.11.2012, 19:14 Uhr, schrieb Duncan Murdoch  
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>:
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On 02-11-2012, at 21:02, Markus Holotta wrote:

            
No.
Read the help for setwd(). 

setwd returns the current directory before the change, invisibly and with the same conventions as getwd. It will give an error if it does not succeed (including if it is not implemented).

The essential bit is "before the change".

Berend
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Aren't you just looking for this?
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David L Carlson
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4352
2 days later