Sys.readlink

Find out if a file path is a symbolic link, and if so what it is linked to, via the system call readlink. Symbolic links are a POSIX concept, not implemented on Windows but for most filesystems on Unix-alikes.

Syntax

R Copy

Sys.readlink(paths)

Arguments

Parameter	Description
paths	character vector of file paths. Tilde expansion is done: see path.expand.

Return Value

A character vector of the same length as paths. The entries are the path of the file linked to, "" if the path is not a symbolic link, and NA if there is an error (e.g., the path does not exist). On platforms without the readlink system call, all elements are "".

Examples

Example

R Copy

# NOT RUN {
##' To check if files (incl. directories) are symbolic links:
is.symlink <- function(paths) isTRUE(nzchar(Sys.readlink(paths), keepNA=TRUE))
## will return all FALSE when the platform has no `readlink` system call.
is.symlink("/foo/bar")
# }

See Also

file.symlink for the creation of symbolic links (and their Windows analogues) file.info