R help - Mar 2009 - problem with "choose.files" command & interactive functions

Hi all,

I?m new to R, and I?m having a small but annoying problem with the 
choose.files command, using version 2.8.1 in Windows XP. I am holding my 
data text files in C:\\Data\\, and I?m writing a short script that first 
resets the default directory to this directory, then allows me to 
interactively select which text file to import and attach, using the 
Windows widget. Here is my script:

setwd("C:\\Data\\")
data<-read.table(choose.files(),header=T,as.is=T)
attach(data)

If I copy and paste the script into R Editor (or directly into RGui) and 
run it, it works perfectly. However, if have imported the script using 
the Open Script button in RGui, then I have a glitch... when I run the 
script, the widget looks in the last folder that I opened interactively 
(i.e., the folder from which I imported my script file) instead of 
looking in the new working directory. BUT... if I run line 3 again 
straight after, it works perfectly the second time. What am I doing 
wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Shay

On 3/26/2009 9:09 AM, Shay O'Farrell wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I?m new to R, and I?m having a small but annoying problem with the 
> choose.files command, using version 2.8.1 in Windows XP. I am holding my 
> data text files in C:\\Data\\, and I?m writing a short script that first 
> resets the default directory to this directory, then allows me to 
> interactively select which text file to import and attach, using the 
> Windows widget. Here is my script:
> 
> setwd("C:\\Data\\")
> data<-read.table(choose.files(),header=T,as.is=T)
> attach(data)
> 
> If I copy and paste the script into R Editor (or directly into RGui) and 
> run it, it works perfectly. However, if have imported the script using 
> the Open Script button in RGui, then I have a glitch... when I run the 
> script, the widget looks in the last folder that I opened interactively 
> (i.e., the folder from which I imported my script file) instead of 
> looking in the new working directory. BUT... if I run line 3 again 
> straight after, it works perfectly the second time. What am I doing 
> wrong? Any help would be appreciated.
If you don't specify where to open the dialog, it will open in the last 
location where it was opened.  This saves time if you are running it 
more than once, because often you will open files from the same 
directory.   If you don't want that, you can specify which directory to 
open, and get it to always open in the current directory using 
choose.files("./*").

Duncan Murdoch