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rloggingrscripttmp

Is it possible to stop `Rscript` cleaning up its `tempdir`?


I'm using R, via Rscript and H2O, but H2O is crashing. I want to review the logs, but the R tempdir that contains them seem to be removed when the R session ends (i.e. when the Rscript finishes).

Is it possible to tell R/Rscript not to remove the tmp folder it uses?


Solution

  • A work around for this would be to use on.exit to get the temporary files and save them in a different directory. An example function would be like this:

        ranfunction <- function(){
    #Get list of files in tempdir
    on.exit(templist <- list.files(tempdir(), full.names = T,pattern = "^file") )
    #create a new directory for files to go on exit
    #use add = T to add to the on.exit call
    on.exit(dir.create(dir1 <- file.path("G:","testdir")),add = T  )
    #for each file in templist assign it to the new directory   
    on.exit(
          lapply(templist,function(x){
          file.create(assign(x, tempfile(tmpdir = dir1) ))})
      ,add=T)
    
    }
    
    ranfunction()
    

    One thing this function does not take into account is that if you rerun it - it will throw an error because the new directory dir1 already exits. You would have to delete dir1 before re-running the script.