safeSave

Small R tool consisting of a single function that helps you find a file or folder name that does not already exist

The find_safe_path function checks whether the specified path exists. If the file or folder does not exist, the specified path is returned to the user. If the folder does not exist and create_folder is set to TRUE, the folder (for a path to a folder) or parent folder (for a path to a file) is created. If the specified path does exist a numeric suffix will be added that does not already exist. The search for a suffix starts with 1 and increases incrementally. It is placed in brackets and, if applicable, comes before the file extension. Thus, the file path /path/to/file.docx could become /path/to/file (1).docx, if the latter does not already exist.

Installation

You can install the released version of safeSave from GitHub with:

install_github("cisglee/safeSave")

Examples

Here are a few examples of how this tool can be used.

File Path

For a file path, the function find_safe_path checks whether there is a file called data.rds with the specified file path:

library(safeSave)
 
fp <- file.path("path", "to", "file", "data.rds")
file_path <- find_safe_path(fp)

If data.rds does not exist, the original file path is returned. If it does exist, a prefix is added until a non-existent file name is found. The prefix starts at 1 and increments. For example, data.rds can become data (1).rds, data (2).rds etc.

If the folder in which the file is placed might still need to be created, this can be specified by setting the create_folder parameter to TRUE:

library(safeSave)
 
fp <- file.path("path", "to", "file", "data.rds")
file_path <- find_safe_path(fp, create_folder=TRUE)

Directory Path

And here is an example for the use of the function with a directory:

library(safeSave)

dp <- file.path("path", "to", "directory")
dir_path <- find_safe_path(
    dp,
    is_dir=TRUE,
    create=TRUE,
    recursive=TRUE
)

Here find_safe_path checks whether the directory directory exists and, if it does not, it creates this directory. Since recursive is set to TRUE any non-existent parent directories are created as well. If the directory does exist, a suffix is added until a non-existent directory name is found. Naming suffixes are similar to those of file names - i.e., directory can become directory (1) or directory (2) etc.