Launch mac finder window with specified path

Question

Is there a way to launch a mac finder window from the RGUI command line? I'm going through a bunch of files and it would be helpful to see the folder instead of having to use list.files()

Are you looking to open up a dialog box for choosing files for input, or just open up a Finder window? — , Aug 02 '12 at 15:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-02T18:19:07.983

3

To open up the Finder from the RGUI command line, the direct solution is to use:

system("open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/")

EDIT: For a specified path, system("open ~/Desktop") would open the Finder at the user's desktop, for example, because in MacOSX the default application to open any directory is the Finder.

edited Aug 02 '12 at 18:19

answered Aug 02 '12 at 15:47

is there a way to specify the path to open in the finder window? – JoshDG Aug 02 '12 at 17:31
@JoshDG: I've edited my answer to specify the path in the Finder window. – Aug 02 '12 at 17:34

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 02 '12 at 16:46

To select (and return to R) files using Mac's the native file selection dialog can be done as follows, though this solution relies on qtbase and the Qt libraries:

library(qtbase)
file_selector <- function(initial_dir=getwd(), multiple=FALSE) {
  f <- Qt$QFileDialog()
  ## configure
  f$setDirectory(initial_dir)
  if(multiple)
    f$setFileMode(Qt$QFileDialog$ExistingFiles)
  ## run
  out <- f$exec()
  if(out == 1)
    f$selectedFiles()
  else
    NULL
}

If you install the aqua tk libraries (not the X11 ones) then likely tkgetOpenFile could be used, though I didn't check.

Launch mac finder window with specified path

2 Answers2