R help - Dec 2008 - constructing a relative path

Dear R-users,

I want to construct a relative path in R, but I am not able to do it or to
find a function that does it.
My solution is somewhat awkward as it uses string manipulation.

The problem: I have the following folder structure. 

project_folder
       |
       |----- data
       |----- scripts
       |----- output

My working directory is the scripts folder.
Now I want to construct a relative path to the data folder.

Is there an easy way or a function?

TIA

Mark

On Fri, 5 Dec 2008, Mark Heckmann wrote:
> Dear R-users,
>
> I want to construct a relative path in R, but I am not able to do it or to
> find a function that does it.
> My solution is somewhat awkward as it uses string manipulation.
>
> The problem: I have the following folder structure.
>
> project_folder
>       |
>       |----- data
>       |----- scripts
>       |----- output
>
> My working directory is the scripts folder.
> Now I want to construct a relative path to the data folder.
>
> Is there an easy way or a function?
file.path("..", "data")

should work on any R platform (actually "../data" will on any current
R
platform).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595