store output of system command into a variable in r

Question

I am executing the following command in R :

system("ls ")

I need to store the output of the above command in some R variable. Is there a way to do the same??

johannes · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-15 15:01:51Z

158

Use intern=TRUE:

a <- system("ls ", intern = TRUE)

edited Jun 15, 2016 at 15:01

answered Jun 19, 2012 at 9:39

johannes

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3 Comments

Esben Eickhardt Over a year ago

Is there a way to store the information if one makes a system call to a program?

ichbinallen Over a year ago

Is there any way to get both the os program status code and the output of the program?

Leonid Over a year ago

What if I am shelling out to an SQL command which returns 1 million rows? How can I redirect the output to a file first?

Thierry · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-19 09:53:15Z

8

why not use the corresponding R function?

a <- list.files()
b <- list.files(recursive = TRUE)

For more details

?list.files

answered Jun 19, 2012 at 9:53

Thierry

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1 Comment

abalter Over a year ago

Because list.files also lists directories as items, and if you use recursive=T it dives into those directories. There is no simple R way to list just the files in a directory. I use file_list = system('ls -p <target dir> | grep -v /')

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