Creating a folder inside a function

Question

So I want to use R to automatically create a folder for the dataset that I happen to be analyzing. Due to laziness, a function is being written to create this folder, analyze the data, and store results into that folder so that they can be looked at later on.

Now if I try to use the aircraft data from library(robustbase):

setwd("C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/")
analysis<-function(dataset,other_bit_and_pieces){
paste("dir.create(",dataset,")",sep="")
}

analysis(aircraft)

I get either an error message saying that aircraft does not exist, or (if I load the library), it spits out "dir.create(c( all the data from aircraft))"

How should I be writing this so that a new folder is created with the dataset names every time I change dataset?

Albort, that's not laziness. That's intelligence: make the software do boring, repetitive tasks for you! — Carl Witthoft
– Carl Witthoft, Commented Sep 11, 2012 at 11:30

Gavin Simpson · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-11 07:11:34Z

4

The general R idiom for this is deparse(substitute(....)).

analysis <- function(object, create = FALSE){
  dirname <- deparse(substitute(object))
  if(create) {
      dir.create(dirname)
  }
  dirname
}

> mydata <- data.frame(x=1:10)
> analysis(mydata)
[1] "mydata"

Note that I changed the function to not create the dir automagically, in case people are testing and this clobbers an existing dir. To show it is working, I get it to return the dirname. In practice you won't need anything from the if() onwards.

answered Sep 11, 2012 at 7:11

Gavin Simpson

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Comments

mnel · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-11 06:29:20Z

3

From what I can understand something like the following will work

mydata <- data.frame(x=1:10)

analysis <- function(object){
  dir.create(as.character(as.list(match.call())[2]))
}

analysis(mydata)
# will create a directory 'mydata' as a subdirectory of the current working directory.

Look at ?match.call for how this works!

answered Sep 11, 2012 at 6:29

mnel

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