Create Names for Temporary Files

Description

Returns a vector of character strings which can be used as names for temporary files.

Usage

tempfile(pattern = "file")

Arguments

Details

If pattern has length greater than one then the result is of the same length giving a temporary file name for each component of pattern.

The names are very likely to be unique among calls to tempfile in an R session and across simultaneous R sessions. The filenames are guaranteed not to be currently in use.

The file name is made of the pattern, the process number in hex and a random suffix in hex. The filenames will be in the directory given by the first found of the environment variables TMP, TEMP, or "/tmp".

Value

A character vector giving the names of possible (temporary) files.

Note that no files are generated by tempfile.

See Also

unlink for deleting files.

Examples

tempfile(c("ab", "a b c"))   # give file name with spaces in!
## One possibility of getting ALL environment variables;
## compare with `getenv':
fun <- function() {
  FILE <- tempfile("fun")
  on.exit(unlink(FILE))
  system(paste("printenv >", FILE))
  x <- strsplit(scan(FILE, what = ""), "=")
  v <- n <- character(LEN <- length(x))
  for (i in 1:LEN) {
    n[i] <- x[[i]][1]
    v[i] <- paste(x[[i]][-1], collapse = "=")
  }
  structure(v, names = n)
}

## Not run: fun()