R/write_object.R

In dtables: Simplifying Descriptive Frequencies and Statistics

#' Write an object to a file
#'
#' A wrapper for \code{write.table} that saves an object by name to a tab
#' delimited (.tsv) file with options to specify directory and include the
#' current date in the file name.
#'
#' @param object a data.frame, matrix, or vector to write out
#' @param dir a character string specifying the directory (folder) in which save
#'   the object, defaults to current working directory.
#' @param date logical, if \code{TRUE} appends the object name with todays date
#' @param overwrite logical, if \code{TRUE} overwrites existing file of same name
#' @param row.names logical, if \code{TRUE} adds rownames to output file
#' @param col.names logical, if \code{TRUE} adds column names to output file
#' @return Returns nothing. Saves "object_date.tsv" or "object.tsv" to current
#'   directory.
#' @importFrom utils write.table
#' @export
#' @examples
#' write_object(iris2)
#'
write_object <- function(object, dir = NULL, date = TRUE, overwrite = FALSE, row.names = FALSE, col.names = TRUE) {
  if(date){
    date <- paste0("_", Sys.Date())
  } else {
    date <- ""
  }
  name <- deparse(substitute(object))
  if(!is.null(dir)) {
    file.name <- paste0(dir, "/", name, date, ".tsv")
    if(file.name %in% list.files(recursive = T) && overwrite == FALSE) {
      stop(paste0("File '", file.name, "' already exists"))
    }
  } else {
    file.name <- paste0(name, date, ".tsv")
    if(file.name %in% list.files() && overwrite == FALSE) {
      stop(paste0("File '", file.name, "' already exists"))
    }
  }

  if(col.names){
    col.names = ifelse(row.names, NA, TRUE)
  }

  write.table(object,
              file = file.name,
              sep = "\t",
              row.names = row.names,
              col.names = col.names)
}