using paste() to construct windows path in R

Question

I am trying to take two character vectors:

directory <- "specdata"
id <- 1

and read the data in from the file that they would "point" to: ie:

data <- read.table(paste(directory,"\\",id,".csv", sep="")

The problem is in the result of paste and the "\". I am trying to get it to return "specdata\1.csv" however it returns "specdata\\1.csv" which is not the same.

To no avail, I have also tried:

• using a single-slash "\"
• using single quotes like '\\'
• using single quotes like '\'
• changing sep = '\'
• changing sep = '\\'
• changing sep = "\"
• changing sep = "\\"
• using the c() function first like

code:

fileNameAndPath <- c(directory,"\",id,".csv")
data <- read.table(fileNameAndPath)

Answer 1

You should use file.path instead (it is independent of your platform):

file.path(directory, paste(id, ".csv", sep=""))