how to pass path string variables with space to system command in R

Question

When I try to copy files in R, the dir names with space come across to me. For example, I have a string variable filname with its value c:/Datalogger Folder/Bdev.txt and I want to copy this file to A.txt. I know that I should pass filname into system function:

   system(paste("cp",filname,"A.txt",sep=" "))

While for the reason that there is a space in c:/Datalogger Folder/Bdev.txt, the R complained that "c:/Datalogger no such file or directory". Please guide me how to resolve this problem. Thanks for any advise.

You need to escape the string with a \ for cp to understand it: c:/Datalogger\ Folder/Bdev.txt — divibisan
– divibisan, Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 23:36
how to process variable filname? I cannot add \ into this variable. — dawei
– dawei, Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 23:47
I'd just delete ` Folder` and keep only Datalogger. I think having spaces in folders or filenames is not good practice and will only produce trouble — Tung
– Tung, Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 23:49
@Tung, Actually the files to be processed are transferred to me, I cannot always manually rename directory as I need. — dawei
– dawei, Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 23:55
You can write a simple shell script to do folder name and file name cleanup before doing anything in R unix.stackexchange.com/questions/223182/… — Tung
– Tung, Commented Sep 11, 2018 at 0:06

Abdallah Atef · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-11 05:14:29Z

1

You can add escape character \ before spaces in filname using gsub(). For example:

filname <- gsub(" ", "\ ", filname)

answered Sep 11, 2018 at 5:14

Abdallah Atef

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