[R] Reorder file names read by list.files function

[Ek Esawi]

Thank you Bill and RUI. I use month.name with sort and basename, as
suggested by Bill. i got the sorted numerical values, then i use
month.name to get proper ordered month names. The problem is that i
have to paste to the names the extension PDF giving me the correct
ordered file names, but then i get the same error message which
suggest that the code is not reading the files properly

I have not tried RUI's yet, but i will if nothing else works out.

Thanks again--EK

had to strip off file.names from the extension PDF, but when i paste
the month.name with .PDF to get the correct file names, i am getting
the same error.
On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 4:47 PM William Dunlap <wdunlap using tibco.com> wrote:
>
> Use basename(filename) to remove the lead parts of the full path to the file.  E.g., replace
>    FNs <- sort(match(sub("\\.PDF", "", file.names), month.name))
> with (the untested)
>     FNs <- sort(match(sub("\\.PDF", "", basename(file.names)), month.name))
>
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
>
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 1:38 PM, Ek Esawi <esawiek using gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi again,
>>
>> I worked with RUi's idea of using the match function with month.name.
>> I got numerical values for months then i sorted and pasted the PDF
>> file extension. It gave me the file order i wanted, but now statements
>> 8,9,&10 don't work and i kept getting an error which is listed below.
>> The dilemma is if i add full.names=TRUE in statement 6 then statements
>> 9 and 10 don't produce what they did earlier. If i put
>> full.names=FALSE, then i am back to square 1.
>> Any idea is greatly appreciated.:
>>
>> The code
>>
>> 1. nstall.packages("tabulizer")
>> 2. installed.packages("stringr")
>> 3. library(stringr)
>> 4. library(tabulizer)
>> 5. path = "C:/Users/namei/Documents/TextMining/S2017"
>> 6. file.names <- dir(path, pattern =".PDF",full.names = TRUE)
>> 7. file.names <- str_remove(file.names,"\\s[0-9][0-9]")
>> 8. FNs <- sort(match(sub("\\.PDF", "", file.names), month.name))
>> 9. FNs1 <- paste0(month.name[FNs],".","PDF")
>> 10 A <- lapply(FNs1, function(i) extract_tables(i))
>>
>> Output and the error message.
>>
>> path = "C:/Users/eesawi/Documents/TextMining/S2017"
>> > file.names <- dir(path, pattern =".PDF",full.names = TRUE)
>> > file.names <- str_remove(file.names,"\\s[0-9][0-9]")
>> > FNs <- sort(match(sub("\\.PDF", "", file.names), month.name))
>> > FNs1 <- paste0(month.name[FNs],".","PDF")
>> > A <- lapply(FNs1, function(i) extract_tables(i))
>>  Show Traceback
>>
>>  Error in normalizePath(path.expand(path), winslash, mustWork) :
>>   path[1]=".PDF": The system cannot find the file specified
>> On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 9:44 AM Ek Esawi <esawiek using gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi All--
>> >
>> > I used base R list.file function to read files from a directory. The
>> > file names are months (April, August, etc). That's the system reads
>> > them in alphabetical order., but i want to reordered them in calendar
>> > order (January, February, ...December).. I thought i might be able to
>> > do it via RegEx or possibly gtools package, I am wondering if there is
>> > an easier way.
>> >
>> > Thanks--EK
>> >
>> > Example
>> > path = "C:/Users/name/Downloads/MyFiles"
>> > file.names <- dir(path, pattern =".PDF")
>> >
>> > Example output
>> > Output:
>> > "February.PDF"  "January.PDF" "March.PDF"
>> > Desired output
>> > "January.PDF"  "February.PDF" "March.PDF"
>>
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>
>