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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T19:58:18+00:00

To create a path to a file in a platform independent way, you are

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To create a path to a file in a platform independent way, you are supposed to use file.path. It bugs me a little that, e.g., 

file.path("some dir", "some other dir", "my file")

is more characters and less readable than

"some dir/some other dir/my file"

I want to know if there are any platforms for which the second version will fail. Certainly the path separator (.Platform$file.sep) is / for Linux, Mac and Windows.

Are there any platforms (that R runs on) which have a different value of .Platform$file.sep?

EDIT:
The the only current platforms from the Wikipedia list (thanks darioo) that don’t use / are OpenVMS, Stratus VOS and Symbian. The FAQ on R states that R is developed for

the Unix-like, Windows and Mac
families of operating systems

So there is no official support for any of these platforms. I don’t have a good feel for whether or not there’s an army of hackers running R on their Nokia phones. Can you guesstimate a probability that anyone uses R on these systems?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Here is a list of operating systems with their file separators.

    Compare it with the list of OS’s on which R runs and you’ll have a reference list.

    Although, you’ll probably stumble upon / in 99% of situations.

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