reproducible (version 1.1.1)

linkOrCopy: Hardlink, symlink, or copy a file

Description

Attempt first to make a hardlink. If that fails, try to make a symlink (on non-windows systems and symlink = TRUE). If that fails, copy the file.

Usage

linkOrCopy(from, to, symlink = TRUE)

Arguments

from, to

Character vectors, containing file names or paths. to can alternatively be the path to a single existing directory.

symlink

Logical indicating whether to use symlink (instead of hardlink). Default FALSE.

See Also

file.link, file.symlink, file.copy.

Examples

# NOT RUN {
library(datasets)
library(magrittr)
library(raster)

tmpDir <- file.path(tempdir(), "symlink-test") %>%
  normalizePath(winslash = '/', mustWork = FALSE)
dir.create(tmpDir)

f0 <- file.path(tmpDir, "file0.csv")
write.csv(iris, f0)

d1 <- file.path(tmpDir, "dir1")
dir.create(d1)
write.csv(iris, file.path(d1, "file1.csv"))

d2 <- file.path(tmpDir, "dir2")
dir.create(d2)
f2 <- file.path(tmpDir, "file2.csv")

## create link to a file
linkOrCopy(f0, f2)
file.exists(f2) ## TRUE
identical(read.table(f0), read.table(f2)) ## TRUE

## deleting the link shouldn't delete the original file
unlink(f0)
file.exists(f0) ## FALSE
file.exists(f2) ## TRUE

## using rasters and other file-backed objects
f3a <- system.file("external/test.grd", package = "raster")
f3b <- system.file("external/test.gri", package = "raster")
r3a <- raster(f3a)
f4a <- file.path(tmpDir, "raster4.grd")
f4b <- file.path(tmpDir, "raster4.gri")
linkOrCopy(f3a, f4a) ## hardlink
linkOrCopy(f3b, f4b) ## hardlink
r4a <- raster(f4a)

isTRUE(all.equal(r3a, r4a)) # TRUE

## cleanup
unlink(tmpDir, recursive = TRUE)
# }