Remove a directory in R invoking linux commands

Question

I am writing code using R that invokes Linux commands to create a directory with multiple files which has to be deleted at the end.

I tried using file.remove(directory_name) which removed the directory only when its empty. If the directory has files, file.remove didn’t work. unlink(directory_name) didn't remove the directory.

My code:

dir.create("./dir1")  
dir.create("./dir2")  
............  
............  
............  
file.remove("./dir1")  
unlink("./dir1, recursive = TRUE")

file.remove() threw an error:

cannot remove file './dir1', reason 'Directory not empty'.

while, unlink() didn't remove the directory.

How do I delete a directory with files in it?

If you first use `unlink` to remove the files from the directory, you can then delete the directory. — Stephen Rauch, Feb 13 '17 at 00:46

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 13 '17 at 00:49

0

To unlink recursively, you need to pass the recursive = TRUE as an additional parameter:

This:

 unlink("./dir1", recursive = TRUE)

Not this:

unlink("./dir1, recursive = TRUE")

answered Feb 13 '17 at 00:49

Stephen Rauch

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You are welcome. The best way to say thank you on Stack overflow is via upvotes for any answer you find useful. – Stephen Rauch Feb 13 '17 at 18:11

Remove a directory in R invoking linux commands

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