R: Platform Specific Variables

Platform {base}

R Documentation

Platform Specific Variables

Description

.Platform is a list with functions and variables as components. This provides means to write OS portable R code.

Usage

.Platform
Platform()

Details

Currently, .Platform <- Platform() when R starts up.

Value

.Platform is list with at least the following components:

OS.type

character, giving the Operating System (family) of the computer. One of the following values is returned: "unix", "mac", or "windows" (in historical order).

file.sep

character, giving the file separator, used on your platform, e.g., "/" on Unix alikes.

dynlib.ext

character, giving the file name extension of dynamically loadable libraries, e.g., ".dll" on Windows.

GUI

character, giving the type of GUI in use, or "unknown" if no GUI can be assumed.

Examples

if(.Platform$OS.type == "unix") {
   system.test <- function(...) { system(paste("test", ...)) == 0 }
   dir.exists <- function(dir) sapply(dir, function(d)system.test("-d", d))
   dir.exists(c(R.home(), "/tmp", "~", "/NO"))# > T T T F
}