[R] delete content of directory - unlink doesn't work as expected

[Eric Thompson]

This has worked for me:

system("rm path/*")



On 11/28/06, Hans-Peter <gchappi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I try to delete the files in a directory. While the command
>
> invisible(lapply( list.files( "DeleteThis" ), function(x)
> file.remove(paste("DeleteThis", x, sep="/" )) ))
>
> works, I keep thinking that there should be a more direct command.
>
> "unlink" looks like a good candidate but whith this I only arrive to
> either delete the whole directory or nothing happens at all. Code:
>
> file.exists( "DeleteThis" )        # TRUE: folder is here
>
> (unlink( "DeleteThis/*.*" ))             # 0, content doesn't get deleted
> (unlink( "DeleteThis/*" ))               # do.
> (unlink( "DeleteThis/*.*", TRUE ))  # do.
> (unlink( "DeleteThis/*", TRUE ))    # do.
>
> unlink( "DeleteThis", TRUE )  # whole folder will be deleted
>
> According to the help placeholders are allowed so I don't see where is an error.
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
> --
> Regards,
> Hans-Peter
>
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