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rfile-manipulation

Copy multiple files from multiple folders to a single folder using R

Hey I want to ask how to copy multiple files from multiple folders to a single folders using R language

Assuming there are three folders:

  1. desktop/folder_A/task/sub_task/
  2. desktop/folder_B/task/sub_task/
  3. desktop/folder_C/task/sub_task/

In each of the sub_task folder, there are multiple files. I want to copy all the files in the sub_task folders and paste them in a new folder (let's name this new folder as "all_sub_task") on desktop. Can anyone show me how to do it in R using the loop or apply function? Thanks in advance.

Solution

  • Here is an R solution.

    # Manually enter the directories for the sub tasks
my_dirs <- c("desktop/folder_A/task/sub_task/", 
             "desktop/folder_B/task/sub_task/",
             "desktop/folder_C/task/sub_task/")

# Alternatively, if you want to programmatically find each of the sub_task dirs
my_dirs <- list.files("desktop", pattern = "sub_task", recursive = TRUE, include.dirs = TRUE)

# Grab all files from the directories using list.files in sapply
files <- sapply(my_dirs, list.files, full.names = TRUE)

# Your output directory to copy files to
new_dir <- "all_sub_task"
# Make sure the directory exists
dir.create(new_dir, recursive = TRUE)

# Copy the files
for(file in files) {
  # See ?file.copy for more options
  file.copy(file, new_dir)
}

    Edited to programmatically list sub_task directories.