Normalise and quote file paths — normalize

This function ensures that file paths are expressed in a consistent and canonical form. It first converts paths to absolute form using fs::path_abs(), then tidies them with fs::path_tidy(), and finally quotes them correctly based on the operating system. By default, base::normalizePath() behaves differently on Windows and Linux when a file does not exist. On Windows, it tries to construct an absolute path, while on Linux, it returns the input path as-is (relative). To maintain consistency across platforms, this function uses fs::path_abs() instead of base::normalizePath().

Usage

normalize_path(path, must_work = FALSE)

Arguments

path: Character vector. file path(s).
must_work: Logical; if TRUE, the function errors for non-existing paths.

Value

A character vector of absolute, tidied, and shell-quoted paths.

Author

Ahmed El-Gabbas

Examples

# current working directory
normalize_path(".")
#> /home/runner/work/ecokit/ecokit/docs/reference

# up one directory
normalize_path("../")
#> /home/runner/work/ecokit/ecokit/docs

list.files()[1]
#> [1] "OS.html"
normalize_path(list.files()[1])
#> /home/runner/work/ecokit/ecokit/docs/reference/OS.html

# absolute path with windows-style slashes
normalize_path("D://Folder1//Folder2//file.txt")
#> D:/Folder1/Folder2/file.txt

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
  # this will give an error if the path does not exist
  normalize_path("D://Folder1//Folder2//file.txt", must_work = TRUE)
} # }