Creating Directories in R

A note on creating directories in R with the dir.create() function.

Note

Original Japanese version: Rでディレクトリを作成する方法

In R, you can create directories with the dir.create() function.

The dir.create() Function

The syntax is as follows.

dir.create(path, showWarnings = TRUE, recursive = FALSE, mode = "0777")

• path: specifies the path of the directory to create. ~ represents the home directory.
• showWarnings: if set to TRUE, a warning is shown when the directory already exists. The default is TRUE.
• recursive: if set to TRUE, parent directories are also created as needed. The default is FALSE.
• mode: specifies the access permissions for the directory to create. The default is "0777".

Note

The mode argument is meaningful only on Unix-like systems. It is ignored on Windows. In most cases, the default is fine. This post does not explain it in detail.

If you want to know more, see the help page with ?dir.create, or consult the following documentation.

• files2: Manipulaton of Directories and File Permissions

Example

For example, the following code creates a directory named save/path/to/directory. Even if the parent directories do not exist, specifying recursive = TRUE creates the required parent directories as well. Also, showWarnings = FALSE suppresses warnings if the directory already exists.

save_dir <- "save/path/to/directory"
dir.create(save_dir, showWarnings = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)

When this code is executed, save/path/to/directory is created even if the save directory does not yet exist.