CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
youngtred
youngtred

Reputation: 155

Read all files in specific folder in R

I am trying to read all files in a specific sub-folder of the wd. I have been able to add a for loop successfully, but the loop only looks at files within the wd. I thought the command line:

directory <- 'folder.I.want.to.look.in'

would enable this but the script still only looks in the wd. However, the above command does help create a list of the correct files. I have included the script below that I have written but not sure what I need to modify to aim it at a specific sub-folder.

directory <- 'folder.I.want.to.look.in'
files <- list.files(path = directory)
out_file <- read_excel("file.to.be.used.in.output", col_names = TRUE)

for (filename in files){
  
  show(filename)
  
  filepath <- paste0(filename)
  

  ## Import data
  data <- read_excel(filepath, skip = 8, col_names = TRUE)
  data <- data[, -c(6:8)]
further script
}

The further script is irrelevant to this question and works fine. I just can't get the loop to look over each file in files from directory. Many thanks in advance

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4420

Answers (1)

heds1
heds1

Reputation: 3448

Set your base directory, and then use it to create a vector of all the files with list.files, e.g.:

base_dir <- 'path/to/my/working/directory'
all_files <- paste0(base_dir, list.files(base_dir, recursive = TRUE))

Then just loop over all_files. By default, list.files has recursive = FALSE, i.e., it will only get the files and directory names of the directory you specify, rather than going into each subfolder. Setting recursive = TRUE will return the full filepath excluding your base directory, which is why we concatenate it with base_dir.

Upvotes: 1

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