Question

I found out that it is possible to open the windows explorer with a predefined path via the cmd.exe program using the following command:

explorer PATH 

Back in R using the following command opens up the windows explorer:

system("explorer", intern=TRUE) 

However, when I specify a path R returns the following warning message and does not open the explorer at the specified path:

> system("explorer C:\\Users\\xxx", intern=TRUE) 
character(0) 
attr(,"status") 
[1] 1 
Warning message: 
running command 'explorer C:\Users\xxx' had status 1 

I quoted the \ otherwise R complained about not recognising \U from \Users.

However, when the command is executed as we would expect the double \ are replaced by only one .

When I copy paste the explorer C:\Users\xxx bit from the R warning message into the cmd.exe program the explorer is opened up at the specified path.

Does anybody have any idea why that fails?

Answer 1

try

shell("explorer C:\\Users\\xxx", intern=TRUE)