Question

?file.path indicates that this function is designed to be faster than paste, so I am concerned that writing

dirname <- "/path/to/myfile/"
file.path(dirname, paste(output, ".csv", sep = ""))

is missing the point.

Is it?

Answer 1

file.path has some special functions for dealing with stuff inside R’s library, as well as working across platforms.

For the purposes of writing csv files, saving plots as pngs and such, I believe that paste is a better option because it bypasses the “middleman”. Using paste within file.path is not really a problem (if you need the functionality of file.path), because any speed differences will be undetectable.