CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Alexandros
Alexandros

Reputation: 345

Cant delete files in dir with pattern

Sometimes I have to use R code to remove files in specific folders. To make sure i never remove something by accident I want to use pattern to make sure only desired files will be remove (so if I use wrong dir nothing will happen):

file.remove(dir(path="D:/Folder/RestOfMyPath/",pattern="*_pattern.csv"))

And i get:

[1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
[18] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
There were 28 warnings (use warnings() to see them)

And were i type warnings():

1: In file.remove(dir(path = "D:/Folder/RestOfMyPath/",  ... :
  cannot remove file 'my_file1_pattern.csv', reason 'No such file or directory'

I can see the files (my_file1_pattern.csv for example) are there. I can open them or delete manually. They all are generated by R but they are regular .csv files. The weirdest part is that this sometimes works but only as it feels like it. Sometimes i get TRUE instead FALSE and files are removed (rarely). But I cant figure out how to control it. I use R studio but same problem occurs in raw R.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2563

Answers (1)

AdamO
AdamO

Reputation: 4960

file.remove is looking in the working directory for the files that you dir'ed in the other directory you supplied. dir's output is just the file names.

Try 

mydir <- "D:/Folder/RestOfMyPath/"
delfiles <- dir(path=mydir ,pattern="*_pattern.csv"))
file.remove(file.path(mydir, delfiles))

The "TRUE" instances are you blowing out (the wrong) files in the working directory that share the same name.

Upvotes: 5

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