Checking file permissions from R

Question

Dear Stackoverflowers,

I am looking for a way to check the file permissions in the current folder (the one that can be obtained using getwd()) in the R language. I am working on a Unix platform and know that I can get file permission mode using file.info(), but I do not know how to check to which category (owner / group / rest) I belong and thus what specific rights I have.

A second question that I have is whether this can also be done cross-platform, so that this would work also on other platforms (most importantly on Windows).

Thank you very much for you help!

Thomas

Answer 1

file.access() returns this information. So

file.access(".", 2)

tells you whether or not you can write to the current working directory. You can supply a vector of filenames/directories as appropriate.

Note that if there is a chance that permissions can change underneath you (i.e. multitasking system), you may be better off to just use try and catch the error if you don't have permissions.