How to open working directory directly from R console? - r

Question

How can I open my getwd() folder directly from the R console? This is useful if I want to see something I've recently just exported there. A google search has revealed nothing and I don't have the capability to build a function.

Answer 1

If you actually want a file browser you could create a function to open the directory. This is done differently based on the operating system you're using but this should cover most bases
opendir <- function(dir = getwd()){
if (.Platform['OS.type'] == "windows"){
shell.exec(dir)
} else {
system(paste(Sys.getenv("R_BROWSER"), dir))
}
}
If you don't need it to be cross platform you can reduce it down to just the code for your OS. But if you just want to view the files in a given directory then using dir should be good enough.

Answer 2

You can use dir() or list.files() to display the files in the current working directory or file.choose() to browse the directory and choose a file. All three default to the current working directory.

Answer 3

I'd suggest using:
utils::browseURL(getwd())

Answer 4

Posting an answer because the above function did not work for me - got around it buusing a macOS terminal command via a system call from within R (session info below).
Function
opendir <- function(directory = getwd()){
system(sprintf('open %s', shQuote(directory)))
}
Session Info
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.6.0 (2019-04-26)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.6/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
locale:
[1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils
[5] datasets methods base
other attached packages:
[1] here_0.1 htmlwidgets_1.3
[3] openxlsx_4.1.0.1 tictoc_1.0
[5] plotly_4.9.0 jsonlite_1.6
[7] ggplot2_3.1.1 lubridate_1.7.4
[9] httr_1.4.0 data.table_1.12.2
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] zip_2.0.2 Rcpp_1.0.1
[3] RColorBrewer_1.1-2 later_0.8.0
[5] pillar_1.4.0 compiler_3.6.0
[7] plyr_1.8.4 tools_3.6.0
[9] digest_0.6.19 packrat_0.5.0
[11] tibble_2.1.1 gtable_0.3.0
[13] viridisLite_0.3.0 pkgconfig_2.0.2
[15] rlang_0.3.4 shiny_1.3.2
[17] rstudioapi_0.10 crosstalk_1.0.0
[19] yaml_2.2.0 withr_2.1.2
[21] dplyr_0.8.1 stringr_1.4.0
[23] rprojroot_1.3-2 grid_3.6.0
[25] tidyselect_0.2.5 glue_1.3.1
[27] R6_2.4.0 processx_3.3.1
[29] purrr_0.3.2 tidyr_0.8.3
[31] magrittr_1.5 ps_1.3.0
[33] promises_1.0.1 backports_1.1.4
[35] scales_1.0.0 htmltools_0.3.6
[37] assertthat_0.2.1 xtable_1.8-4
[39] mime_0.6 colorspace_1.4-1
[41] httpuv_1.5.1 labeling_0.3
[43] stringi_1.4.3 lazyeval_0.2.2
[45] munsell_0.5.0 crayon_1.3.4