[R] Returning only a file path on Windows

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 5/22/2009 10:45 AM, amvds at xs4all.nl wrote:
> I am choosing a file like this:
> 
> #Bring up file selection box
> fn<-file.choose()
> fp<-file.path(fn,fsep='\\')

file.path() constructs a path from component parts, it doesn't extract 
the path from a filename.

You want dirname(fn).  You may also want to look at normalizePath, to 
convert short names to long ones, or shortPathName, for the reverse.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> Unfortunately, the file path contains the short file name and extension as
> well. I had hoped to get only the path so I could make my own long
> filenames (for output graphs) by concatenation with this file path.
> 
> Of course I can split the string and assemble the components from the
> returned list:
> 
> fp<-strsplit(fp,'\\',fixed=TRUE)
> 
> 
> But there must be a better way?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Alex van der Spek
> 
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