R/addToPath.R

In jniedballa/camtrapR: Camera Trap Data Management and Preparation of Occupancy and Spatial Capture-Recapture Analyses

#' Add a directory to PATH temporarily
#' 
#' Temporarily adds a directory to the environmental variable PATH for system
#' calls from within R. This allows Windows users to store exiftool.exe
#' anywhere on their hard drive and is useful if they cannot store the file 
#' in system directories. It is not needed on Linux or MacOS machines.
#' 
#' Several functions within this package depend on ExifTool. Under Windows,
#' exiftool.exe cannot be used if it is not in a directory path specified in
#' PATH. This can be solved by adding the directory containing exiftool.exe for
#' temporary use within the running R process. It can also be useful in other 
#' contexts besides Exiftool.
#' 
#' @param directory character. the directory in the file system to add to PATH 
#' (e.g. the directory containing exiftool.exe).
#' 
#' @return invisible logical indicating whether \code{directory} was added to
#' PATH successfully (in the running R process).
#' 
#' @note The directories in PATH can be queried by \code{Sys.getenv("PATH")}.
#' 
#' @author Juergen Niedballa
#' 
#' @examples
#' 
#' exiftool_dir <- "C:/Path/To/Exiftool"
#' addToPath(directory = exiftool_dir)
#' 
#' # check if it has been added to PATH
#' grepl(exiftool_dir,  Sys.getenv("PATH"))
#' 
#' @export addToPath
#' 
addToPath <- function(directory){
  WPATH <- Sys.getenv("PATH")
  WPATH1 <- paste(directory, WPATH, sep=";")
  Sys.setenv(PATH=WPATH1)
  return(invisible(grepl(directory,  Sys.getenv("PATH"))))
}