tempfile: Create Names for Temporary Files
In robertzk/monadicbase: The R Base Package

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Note on parallel References See Also Examples

tempfile returns a vector of character strings which can be used as names for temporary files.

1 2	tempfile(pattern = "file", tmpdir = tempdir(), fileext = "") tempdir()

`pattern`	a non-empty character vector giving the initial part of the name.
`tmpdir`	a non-empty character vector giving the directory name
`fileext`	a non-empty character vector giving the file extension

The length of the result is the maximum of the lengths of the three arguments; values of shorter arguments are recycled.

The names are very likely to be unique among calls to tempfile in an R session and across simultaneous R sessions (unless tmpdir is specified). The filenames are guaranteed not to be currently in use.

The file name is made by concatenating the path given by tmpdir, the pattern string, a random string in hex and a suffix of fileext.

By default, tmpdir will be the directory given by tempdir(). This will be a subdirectory of the per-session temporary directory found by the following rule when the R session is started. The environment variables TMPDIR, TMP and TEMP are checked in turn and the first found which points to a writable directory is used: if none succeeds ‘/tmp’ is used. The path should not contain spaces. Note that setting any of these environment variables in the R session has no effect on tempdir(): the per-session temporary directory is created before the interpreter is started.

For tempfile a character vector giving the names of possible (temporary) files. Note that no files are generated by tempfile.

For tempdir, the path of the per-session temporary directory.

R processes forked by functions such as mclapply in package parallel (or multicore) share a per-session temporary directory. Further, the ‘guaranteed not to be currently in use’ applies only at the time of asking, and two children could ask simultaneously. This is circumvented by ensuring that tempfile calls in different children try different names.

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

unlink for deleting files.

tempfile(c("ab", "a b c"))   # give file name with spaces in!

tempfile("plot", fileext = c(".ps", ".pdf"))

tempdir() # works on all platforms with a platform-dependent result