CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdirectoryrstudio
user3380666
user3380666

Reputation: 539

How do you change the default directory in RStudio (or R)?

I consulted http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/workspaces and tried the setwd code and clicking on More --> Set as working directory options. However, the next time I closed and opened RStudio, it did NOT change my directory to the one I wanted.

How do I set the directory so I don't have change it each time I open RStudio?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 42

Views: 121971

Answers (5)

Etienne Jacquot
Etienne Jacquot

Reputation: 486

This is a great question and the solution has alluded me for years. I've often instructed users to manually set the Global Configurations working directory, but it's of course preferable from an administrative standpoint to set this serverwide.

At our organization we are leveraging an NFS mounted directory for end user home dirs across multiple servers. Conveniently I am able to set the following in /etc/R/Rprofile.site:

# Get the value of the USER environment variable
user <- Sys.getenv("USER")

# Check if the current user is not root
if (user != "root") {
  # Concatenate the user's home directory with the desired path
  user_home_path <- paste("/mnt/share/home_dir/", user, sep = "")

  # Set the working directory
  setwd(user_home_path)
} else {
  # Display a message or take appropriate action for root user
  cat("Root user detected. Proceed with caution and install packages serverwide.\n\n")
}

Upvotes: 0

ANA MARIA OSPINA TOBAR
ANA MARIA OSPINA TOBAR

Reputation: 41

I faced the same problem. There are different way to changes you working directory in RStudio, some of them are, for example:

setwd("~/R/R Programming") #Note that ~ represents in a short way your document folder (or whatever folder you are using for) and what its before it.

Set our working directory without using squigless:

setwd("C:\Users\Usuario\Documents\R\R Programming")

Does the same thing using forward slashes:

setwd("C:/Users/Usuario/Documents/R/R Programming")

I got the information from the following link (though there are another options you can find in the video, recommended): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_QnNhQ3jfY

Upvotes: 4

soirbleu
soirbleu

Reputation: 97

On R (3.1.2) for Windows (Win7) I did the following and it worked:

1- Navigate to the file "Rprofile.site" in the R-folder in my case: C:\Program Files\R\etc\Rprofile.site where "etc" is indeed the given name of the sub-folder.

2- Open the file Rprofile.site in a text-editor with administrator privileges (I did in Notepad) and insert right at the top of the file in the first line the following command which tells R to set the working directory at start-up to the PATH you are specifying within the brackets (be sure you use double backslashes "\\" for Windows!), in my case:

setwd("C:\\Users\\FWA\\Documents\\PROGR&MOOCS\\R_coursera")

3- Save the file which then looks like this:

setwd("C:\\Users\\FWA\\Documents\\PROGR&MOOCS\\R_coursera")

# Things you might want to change

# options(papersize="a4")
# options(editor="notepad")
# options(pager="internal")

# set the default help type
# options(help_type="text")
  options(help_type="html")

# set a site library
# .Library.site <- file.path(chartr("\\", "/", R.home()), "site-library")


# set a CRAN mirror
# local({r <- getOption("repos")
#       r["CRAN"] <- "http://my.local.cran"
#       options(repos=r)})

# Give a fortune cookie, but only to interactive sessions
# (This would need the fortunes package to be installed.)
#  if (interactive()) 
#    fortunes::fortune()

4- Fire up the R-Studio and at the command prompt type the 'get working directory' command like this:

getwd()

5- Your R-Studio should now return the working directory path you previously have specified. In my case R returns this:

[1] "C:/Users/FWA/Documents/PROGR&MOOCS/R_coursera"

6- You're done.

Note: this changes the working directory for your R environment, not only for R-Studio.

Upvotes: 9

Burak URAY
Burak URAY

Reputation: 119

Session -> Set Working Directory -> Choose Directory ... or shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+H)

Or you can set your working directory on console like that = setwd("C:/Users/burak/Desktop/R")

Upvotes: 8

jlhoward
jlhoward

Reputation: 59355

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but under Tools | Global Options... (alt-TG) there is a way to set the default directory.

Upvotes: 60

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