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Get name of current user

What is a cross-platform way of getting the username of the current user in R? I am currently using 

system('whoami', intern=TRUE)

However this assumes that the user has shell access, and that the whoami program is available. Is there a more native to get this information in R?

Solution

  • I would do this : 

     Sys.getenv("USERNAME")  ## works under windows

    or better more robust:

     Sys.info()[["user"]]

    But under unix-like system the result is sometimes different of system('whoami', intern=TRUE) :

    whoami outputs the username that the user is working under, whereas $USER outputs the username that was used to login.

    For example, if the user logged in as John and su into root, whoami displays root and echo $USER displays John. This is because the su command does not invoke a login shell by default.