R - file.copy function

Question

As part of a larger script, I need to move all <.csv> files from one directory to another. I wrote a simple script to do it, and was working fine, but for some reason, it is not working now, and I am going nuts trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

The code is:

rawPath <- "./test_dir1"
dataPath <- "./test_dir2"

dataFiles <- dir(rawPath, "*.csv", ignore.case = TRUE, all.files = TRUE)
file.copy(dataFiles, dataPath, overwrite = TRUE )

But I get the following error:

Warning messages: 1: In file.copy(dataFiles, dataPath, overwrite = TRUE) : problem copying .\test_dir1\11085.lis.csv to C:\Users\Desktop\test_dir2\11085.lis.csv: No such file or directory

One error message for each file

Please, find trial directories and files that are a simplified version of what I have in the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7eqvyugc472w19i/AACIjlytbB4s55X0Ga1hmKQka?dl=0

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Your problem is that you have extracted the file names relative to rawPath, and then are trying to use that in file.copy while you're in a different directory. Running your code, look at dataFiles:

dataFiles
# [1] "11085.lis.csv" "13087.lis.csv" "17089.lis.csv" "5081.lis.csv"  "7083.lis.csv" 

You want

file.copy(paste(rawPath, dataFiles, sep = .Platform$file.sep), dataPath, overwrite = TRUE)
# [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE

Or alternatively:

file.copy(file.path(rawPath, dataFiles), dataPath, overwrite = TRUE)
# [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE

To reproduce:

dir.create("test_dir1")
dir.create("test_dir2")
files <- paste0(c(5081, 7083, 11085, 13087, 17089), ".lis.csv")
file.create(paste("test_dir1", files, sep = .Platform$file.sep))
# [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE

dir("test_dir1")
# [1] "11085.lis.csv" "13087.lis.csv" "17089.lis.csv" "5081.lis.csv"  "7083.lis.csv" 
dir("test_dir2")
# character(0)

rawPath <- "./test_dir1"
dataPath <- "./test_dir2"
dataFiles <- dir(rawPath, "*.csv", ignore.case = TRUE, all.files = TRUE)

# To reproduce the error:
file.copy(dataFiles, dataPath, overwrite = TRUE )

# To run without error:
file.copy(file.path(rawPath, dataFiles), dataPath, overwrite = TRUE)