How to get R to recognize your working directory as its working directory?

Question

I use R under Windows on several machines.

I know you can set the working directory from within an R script, like this

setwd(\"C:/Documents and Setti         


        

Answer 1

You could use an environmental variable. This can work with Sys.getenv() and Sys.setenv(). For instance:

> Sys.setenv(R_TEST="testit")
> Sys.getenv("R_TEST")
  R_TEST 
"testit" 

If you sent the variable in your script, you should be able to access it from within, and then call setwd() on that output.

Answer 2

Just a detail: instead of reversing the slashes as you say, just add another backslash. Two of these \\ works the same way as one of these /. That makes it at least a little easier.

Answer 3

For Ubuntu:
Insert the following command into your .Rprofile file (usually in your home directory):

setwd(Sys.getenv("PWD"))

Now your default working directory will be whatever directory you launched R from. Keep in mind you can also set up default workspaces in different directories by saving your workspace image as .RData wherever you plan to launch R (startup sources .Rprofile before searching for .Rdata in the cwd).