I'm working in Rstudio and have multiple scripts open that have different working directories; however, each working directory exists within a larger folder on my computer (see below). Is it possible to add these scripts to an Rstudio Project without reorganizing all my files and changing each script's working directory?
File structure on computer:
Folder A
~~Folder 1
~~Folder 2
~~Folder 3
Say I have 3 scripts open, each with a working directory of either Folder 1, 2, or 3. Can I create a project that incorporates all three scripts. Say, set working directory to "Folder A"
Thanks much.
Technically, you can change working directory programmatically within a project, but this is considered a very poor practice and is strongly recommended against. However, you can set working directory at a project's top level (full path to Folder A, in your example) and then refer to scripts and objects, located in Folders 1-3 via corresponding relative paths. For example: "./Folder1/MyScript.R" or "./Folder2/MyData.csv".
It should be possible to create a project in the larger folder. You could even construct a simple master script in Folder A to manage this workflow:
setwd("./Folder 1")
source("scriptx")
setwd("..")
setwd("./Folder 2")
source("scripty")
setwd("..")
setwd("./Folder 3")
source("scriptz")
setwd("..")
Compared to source("Folder 1/scriptx") which runs each script within Folder A the master script would be running each script within it's own folder. Just make sure to use setwd("..") after running code in each folder and you can even run code in between to save output to the main Folder A.
If your workflow always creates folders in this manner I don't see how this would not be reproducible if you used relative paths. Albeit platform dependent, this modified version would create folders on the fly and run scripts kept in Folder A.
system("mkdir Folder_1")
setwd("./Folder_1")
source("../Folder A/scriptx")
setwd("..")
Notice here that when running terminal commands in R, it is recommended avoid spaces in directory or file names.
Related
I'm kinda lost on that one:
I have set up an R project, let's call it "Test Project.Rproj". The beauty of R projects is the possibility to use relative paths (relative to the .Rproj file). My project consists of a "main.R" script, which is saved on the same level as the .Rproj file.
Additionally I have a directory called 'Output', where I want my plots and exported data to be saved. My "main.R" file looks like the following:
my_df <- data.frame(A = 1:10, B = 11:20)
my_df |>
writexl::write_xlsx(here::here("Output",
paste0("my_df_",
stringr::str_replace_all(as.character(Sys.time()), ":", ""),
".xlsx")))
My final goal is to automate the execution of the 'main.R' file using the Windows Task Scheduler. But in order to do so, I have to be able to run the script from the terminal. The problem here is the working directory. When opening an R project, all the paths are relative to .Rproj file. But in the terminal the current working directory is <C:\Users\my_name>. Of course I could manually set the working directory via cd "path\to\my\project. But I would like to avoid that.
My current call for the execution of the main.R file in the terminal is the following:
"C:\Program Files\R\R-4.1.0\bin\Rscript" -e "source('C:/Users/my_name/path/to/my/project/main.R')"
My two ideas for a solution are the following, but I am happy for other suggestions as well.
In order to replicate the usual use of a project: Is there a way to execute the .Rproj
file from the terminal? In order to create a similar environment as in RStudio, where all the relative paths are working, when executing scripts from the project afterwards?
There are two packages adressing the problem of relative paths: rprojroot and here, where the former is the basis for the latter. I am pretty sure that here does not provide the needed functionality. I tried adding here::i_am("main.R) to my main.R file, but the project root directory still is not found when executing in the terminal from a working directory outside the project.
For rprojroot to work, I think it is also necessary to have your current working directory somewhere within the project. But this package offers a lot of functionality, so I am not sure wheter I am overlooking something.
So I would be happy about any help. Maybe it is impossible and I have to change the working directory manually - then I would be glad to know that as well.
Some links I used in my research:
https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2017/12/workflow-vs-script/
https://malco.io/2018/11/05/why-should-i-use-the-here-package-when-i-m-already-using-projects/
http://jenrichmond.rbind.io/post/how-to-use-the-here-package/
Thanks a lot!
Edit: My current implementation is an additional R script, where I manually set the working directory via setwd() and source the main.R file. However it is always suggested to avoid setwd, which is why this whole question exists.
I have set up a workflow governed by a Makefile.
Under code/ I have multiple *.r scripts each typically responsible for creating one output file (typically an RData file but could also be csv exports or png images, any file in principle)
code/.Rprofile contains some helper functions to bootstrap the whole project directory system and sources some helper functions etc.
The scripts in code/ need this functionality to work properly.
RStudio has the convenient menu entry to set working directory to source file location.
But could I also make it run .Rprofile in that directory if found? Or really just start R a fresh from the directory of the source file?
I am working on a project where I was hoping we'd be able to set file paths using the .Rprofile. I wrote a script that defines paths for specific users and since we're using renv and that puts an activate script into the profile anyways, I just added my paths.R script after that in the .Rprofile.
When I asked a colleague to open the .Rproj file to open the project, I thought it would run renv/activate.R and my paths.R script, but they're not seeing their defined paths, only mine. Am I missing something?
# contents of my .Rprofile
source("renv/activate.R")
source("paths.R")
# contents of path.R
if (Sys.info()["user"] == "francisco"){
data_dir <-
'path/to/data'
}
# etc
Any advice on workflow is welcome. Thanks!
I have a series of pieces of R code which have been designed to be run on other computers. That is, all code is relative to a root directory, which contains a Rstudio project file, .Rproj. There are no absolute file paths. This works fine when I actually open Rstudio, load the .Rproj file and then run the code.
However some of my code takes hours to run, and I need to set multiple scripts to run one after the other. This means creating a .sh file, and running the R script in turn from the command line. However non of my programs run successfully from the command line, as the root directory is no longer set to that of the .Rproj file. I have read about the here package can be used, which will automatically set the root directory to where ever a .here file is located. This is not the case for me.
The working directory it automatically uses is the home directory I have on the computational cluster I am using. The area where all my files, including the .Rproj and .here files is located in a different directory in which I have a lot more space allocated. Both are accessible from a common parent directory, so I assumed there here() function would be able to locate the directory I want to actually use to run my work. But this is not the case.
Effectively, I would like to set the root directory to a location which is not the default root directory on the system I am using. I have put a .here file there, but this is not located by there here() function, which I believe is its primary objective. Any ideas on how to proceed?
EDIT: I am working on a UNIX system. R version 3.4.2.
My problem was similar, but not exactly the same as yours. Perhaps my solution will work for you. When I opened an RStudio project, I found that if I called "library(here)", the root directory is set where the .Rproj file is located and that "set_here" would not change that directory, despite the 'here' package documentation. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, but I decided to solve the problem with a simple R function that moves up the directory tree until it finds a ".here" file. It then loads the "here" package and that sets the root directory where I want it.
I use "touch .here" in a Terminal outside of R to set my root directory, and then call "init_here()" from my newly opened R project:
init_here <- function() {
`%!in%` = Negate(`%in%`)
files <- dir( all.files = T )
while ( ".here" %!in% files & getwd()!="/" ) {
setwd("..")
files <- dir( all.files = T )
}
library(here)
}
Use Case -
In Unix:
cd( '~/myRoot' )
touch( '.here' )
In RStudio, when I open a project, the calls look like:
R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22) -- "Taking Off Again"
< R information removed for clarity >
[Workspace loaded from ~/myRoot/myProject/.RData]
> getwd()
[1] "/Users/me/myRoot/myProject"
> init_here()
here() starts at /Users/me/myRoot
> here()
[1] "/Users/me/myRoot"
>
I can now put a ".here" file at the root of each of my RStudio projects and set the expected root directory independently for each project. If you want to get fancy, you could put the function in each project's .Rprofile so that it runs whenever the project is opened. All of my projects have the .Rproj file in the directory above my "R" directory, so my .Rprofile looks like:
source("./R/init_here.R")
init_here()
Hope that helps.
Did you try simply adding a cd /the/path/where/you/put/the/files command in your shell script?
According to this documentation, here() "uses a reasonable heuristics to find your project's files, based on the current working directory at the time when the package is loaded". The "cd" (change directory) command in a shell script changes the current working directory.
How would I create one directory with four sub-directories? I'm having trouble with this question for a lab I'm doign.
What commands would you issue to build the following directory
structure on the hard drive: Create the directory PROGRAMS in the
root. In the PROGRAMS directory create four subdirectories called:
Adobe, Email, Graphics and MSOffice. In the first three subdirectories
create two user directories called: Personal and Guest. In the
MSOffice subdirectory create two subdirectories called: Word and
Excel. Include a Tree view drawing or printout of the directory
structure.
I know that to create a directory, you'd use
mkdir \programs
But I'm not sure that's even how you start.
Start with the outermost directory. (md and makedir are the same thing, and both works on Windows.)
md \Programs
Now create the next level (repeating for each one):
md \Programs\Adobe
Now the next level:
md \Programs\Adobe\Guest
Continue as needed.