R help - Feb 2015 - extract file name from a path string

Dear all,
what code should I write in order to extract the file name from a give
path? Let's say that I want to get the file "my file.xls" which is
in
the directory/folder "My documents"; since I work both with Windows
and Linux, the paths I am looking at are in the format:

path.windows<-"\\home$\\lm667\\My Documents\\my file.xls"
path.linux<-"/home/My Documents/my file.xls"

I used two words for the file name because sometimes the file names
have multiple words rather than a single one separated by capitals,
"." or "_".
The code should now get the file name, which is included between "\\"
(or "/") and ".xls" but I don't know what regular
expression will do
the trick.
Once the file name has been assigned to a vector, it should be easy to
remove it from the path.windows/.linux and obtain a vector with the
path on its own.
Essentially the output should be as follows:
> file.name
[1] "my file.xls"
> path.w
[1] "\\home$\\lm667\\My Documents\\"
> path.l
[1] "/home/My Documents/"

Thank you,
Luigi

Look at "dirname()" and "basename()". The first would be
what you call
the path. The second is the file.name without the path.

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Luigi Marongiu
<marongiu.luigi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
> what code should I write in order to extract the file name from a give
> path? Let's say that I want to get the file "my file.xls"
which is in
> the directory/folder "My documents"; since I work both with
Windows
> and Linux, the paths I am looking at are in the format:
>
> path.windows<-"\\home$\\lm667\\My Documents\\my file.xls"
> path.linux<-"/home/My Documents/my file.xls"
>
> I used two words for the file name because sometimes the file names
> have multiple words rather than a single one separated by capitals,
> "." or "_".
> The code should now get the file name, which is included between
"\\"
> (or "/") and ".xls" but I don't know what regular
expression will do
> the trick.
> Once the file name has been assigned to a vector, it should be easy to
> remove it from the path.windows/.linux and obtain a vector with the
> path on its own.
> Essentially the output should be as follows:
>
>> file.name
> [1] "my file.xls"
>> path.w
> [1] "\\home$\\lm667\\My Documents\\"
>> path.l
> [1] "/home/My Documents/"
>
> Thank you,
> Luigi
>
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