CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rparametersexe
Liangzhong
Liangzhong

Reputation: 31

How to call exe program and input parameters using R?

I want to call .exe program (spi_sl_6.exe) using a command of R (system), however I can't input parameters to the program using "system". The followwing is my command and parameters:system("D:\\working\spi_sl_6.exe")

https://i.sstatic.net/I6Try.jpg I am searching for a long time on net. But no use. Please help or try to give some ideas how to achieve this. Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3372

Answers (2)

user20650
user20650

Reputation: 25854

This is using the Standardized Precipitation Index software from http://drought.unl.edu/MonitoringTools/DownloadableSPIProgram.aspx.

This seems to give a working solution using Windows (but not without warnings!)

Fisrt download the software and example files

# Create directory to download software
mydir <- "C:\\Users\\david\\spi"
dir.create(mydir)

url <- "http://drought.unl.edu/archive/Programs/SPI"
download.file(file.path(url, "spi_sl_6.exe"), file.path(mydir, "spi_sl_6.exe"), mode="wb")

# Download example files
download.file(file.path(url, "SPI_samplefiles.zip"), file.path(mydir, "SPI_samplefiles.zip"))
# extract one example file, and write out
temp <- unzip(file.path(mydir, "SPI_samplefiles.zip"), "wymo.cor")
dat <- read.table(temp)
# Use this file as an example input
write.table(dat, file.path(mydir,"wymo.cor"), col.names = FALSE, row.names = FALSE)

From page 3 of the help file basic-spi-program-information.pdf at the above link the command line code should be of the form spi 3 6 12 <infile.dat >outfile.dat, however, neither of the following worked (just from command line not in R), and various iterations of how to pass parameters.

C:\Users\david\spi\spi_sl_6 3 <C:\Users\david\spi\wymo.cor >C:\Users\david\spi\out.dat
cd C:\Users\david\spi && spi_sl_6 3 <wymo.cor >out.dat

However, using the accepted answer from Running .exe file with multiple parameters in c# seems to work. That is again from the command line

cd C:\Users\david\spi && (echo 2 && echo 3 && echo 6 && echo wymo.cor && echo out1.dat) | spi_sl_6

So to run this in R you can wrap this in a shell (you will need to change the path to where you have saved the exe)

shell("cd C:\\Users\\david\\spi && (echo 2 && echo 3 && echo 6 && echo wymo.cor && echo out2.dat) | spi_sl_6", intern=TRUE)

out1.dat and out2.dat should be the same.

This throws warning messages, I think from the echo (in R but not from command line) but the output file is produced.

Suppose you can automate all the echo calls sligtly, so all you need to do is input the time parameters.

timez <- c(2, 3, 6)
stime <- paste("echo", timez, collapse =" && ")
infile <- "wymo.cor"
outfile <- "out3.dat"
spiCall <- paste("cd", mydir, "&& (" , stime, "&& echo", infile, "&& echo", outfile, " ) | spi_sl_6")
shell(spiCall)

Upvotes: 2

agstudy
agstudy

Reputation: 121568

You can construct the command using sprintf :

cmd_name <- "D:\\working\spi_sl_6.exe"
param1 <- "a"
param2 <- "b"
system2(sprintf("%s %s %s",cmd_name,param1,param2))

Or using system2( I prefer this option):

system2(cmd_name, args = c(param1,param2))

Upvotes: 1

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