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File Information Utilities

Source: R/general_file_operations.R
file_operations.Rd

A collection of functions to extract information about files, including their extension, size, and type.

Usage

file_extension(file)

file_size(file, ...)

file_type(file)

Arguments

file

A character string representing the file path. Must not be NULL and must be a character string. For file_type, the file must exist.

...

Additional arguments passed to gdata::humanReadable for customizing the output format (for file_size only).

Value

  • file_extension: A character string with the file extension (e.g., "txt"). Returns an empty string if no extension is present.

  • file_size: A character string representing the file size in a human-readable format (e.g., "1.2 MB").

  • file_type: A character string describing the file type (e.g., "ASCII text").

Details

The following functions are included:

  • file_extension: Extracts the file extension from a file path using tools::file_ext. It does not verify file existence or content, only parsing the extension from the file name.

  • file_size: Returns the file size in a human-readable format (e.g., KB, MB, GB) using gdata::humanReadable.

  • file_type: Determines the file type using the system's file command, returning a description of the file type.

Note

  • file_extension does not check file existence or content, only parsing the extension from the file name.

  • file_type relies on the system's file command, so results may vary across platforms. The file system command on Windows (e.g., GnuWin32 or other ports) often misidentifies ZIP files as "data" instead of "Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract", which GNU file correctly reports on Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, Git Bash). This is due to differences in file implementations and Windows path handling.

Author

Ahmed El-Gabbas

Examples

load_packages(terra)

f <- system.file("ex/elev.tif", package = "terra")

file_extension(f)                         # "tif"
#> [1] "tif"

file_size(f)                              # "7.8 KiB"
#> 7.81K

file_type(f)                              # e.g., "TIFF image data ..."
#> [1] "TIFF image data, little-endian, direntries=19, height=90, bps=16, compression=LZW, PhotometricInterpretation=BlackIsZero, width=95"