Chapter 35 R’s Installation directory and “working directory”

When using R there are several levels of where software, files, and R’s working memory are located and organized.

First, R is a program that lives on your hard drive. Occasionally it may get installed someplace we don’t want. We can check where R is located using the R.home() function. This isn’t a commonly used function but is useful for troubleshooting problems.

Second, when R is running it has a working directory where any files you save will be stored. You can check where your working directory is using get.wd(). When you get started, you don’t have to worry much about this, but eventually, it will be very important to make sure you know where your files are going so you can find them back! Using R Projects managed with RStudio is very useful when the time comes to do this.

Third, often in R we create objects (sometimes called variables) which contain information. These are made using R’s assignment operator: <-, which is a “less than” sign and a dash (or an alligator eating a jumping fish, whichever you prefer). To assign something to R’s working memory I do this

my.object <- "something"

I can see everything I’ve assigned to R’s working memory using the command ls().

ls()

## [1] "eaglesPA"     "image.file"   "lynx"         "lyxn.df"      "my.object"   
## [6] "par.default"  "par.mar"      "sunspot.year" "x.lim"

This video covers similar topics

The code used in the video is below. You can just copy and paste it into your R console if you have any trouble.

my.name <- "Your name" #character string
is(my.name)
my.name
home <- R.home()
home
wd <- getwd()
wd
ls()