Most of the functionality is fs can be approximated with functions in base R or in a command line shell. The table at the end of this vignette can be used as a translation aid between these three methods.
fs functions smooth over some of the idiosyncrasies of file handling with base R functions:
Vectorization. All fs functions are vectorized, accepting multiple paths as input. Base functions are inconsistently vectorized.
Predictable return values that always convey a path. All fs functions return a character vector of paths, a named integer or a logical vector, where the names give the paths. Base return values are more varied: they are often logical or contain error codes which require downstream processing.
Explicit failure. If fs operations fail, they throw an error. Base functions tend to generate a warning and a system dependent error code. This makes it easy to miss a failure.
UTF-8 all the things. fs functions always convert input paths to UTF-8 and return results as UTF-8. This gives you path encoding consistency across OSes. Base functions rely on the native system encoding.
Naming convention. fs functions use a consistent naming convention. Because base R’s functions were gradually added over time there are a number of different conventions used (e.g. path.expand() vs normalizePath(); Sys.chmod() vs file.access()).
| fs | base | shell |
|---|---|---|
dir_ls("path") |
list.files("path") |
ls path |
dir_info("path") |
do.call(rbind, lapply(list.files("path"), file.info)) |
ls -al path |
dir_copy("path", "new-path") |
dir.create("new-path"); file.copy("path", "new-path", recursive=TRUE) |
cp path new-path |
dir_create("path") |
dir.create("path") |
mkdir path |
dir_delete("path") |
unlink("path", recursive = TRUE) |
rm -rf path |
dir_exists("path") |
dir.exists("path") |
if [ -d "path" ]; then ... ; fi |
dir_move()file_move) |
file.rename("path", "new-path") |
mv path new-path |
dir_map("path", fun) |
No direct equivalent | for file in $(ls path); do ...; done |
dir_tree("path") |
No direct equivalent | tree path |
| fs | base | shell |
|---|---|---|
file_chmod("path", "mode") |
Sys.chmod("path", "mode") |
chmod mode path |
file_chown("path", "user_id", "group_id") |
No direct equivalent | chown options path |
file_copy("path", "new-path") |
file.copy("path", "new-path") |
cp path new-path |
file_create("new-path") |
file.create("new-path") |
touch new-path |
file_delete("path") |
unlink("path") |
rm path |
file_exists("path") |
file.exists("path") |
if [ -f "path" ]; then ... ; fi |
file_info("path") |
file.info("path") |
ls -al path |
file_move("path", "new-path") |
file.rename("path", "new-path") |
mv path new-path |
file_show("path") |
browseURL("path") |
open path |
file_touch() |
No direct equivalent | touch path |
file_temp() |
tempfile() |
mktemp |
file_test() |
No direct equivalent | if [ -d "path" ]; then ...; fi |
| fs | base | shell |
|---|---|---|
path("top_dir", "nested_dir", "file", ext = "ext") |
file.path("top_dir", "nested_dir", "file.ext") |
top_dir/nested_dir/file.ext |
path_temp(), path_temp("path") |
tempdir(), file.path(tempdir(), "path") |
mktemp -d |
path_expand("~/path") |
path.expand() |
realpath -m -s ~/path |
path_dir("path") |
dirname("path") |
dirname path |
path_file("path") |
basename("path") |
basename path |
path_home() |
path.expand("~") |
$HOME |
path_package("pkgname", "dir", "file") |
system.file("dir", "file", package = "pkgname") |
No direct equivalent |
path_norm("path") |
normalizePath() |
realpath |
path_real("path") |
normalizePath(mustWork = TRUE) |
realpath |
path_rel("path/foo", "path/bar") |
No direct equivalent | No direct equivalent |
path_common(c("path/foo", "path/bar", "path/baz")) |
No direct equivalent | No direct equivalent |
path_ext_remove("path") |
sub("\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]*$", "", "path") |
No direct equivalent |
path_ext_set("path", "new_ext") |
sub("\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]*$", "new_ext", "path") |
No direct equivalent |
path_sanitize("path") |
No direct equivalent | No direct equivalent |