R: Platform Specific Variables

Platform {base} | R Documentation

## Platform Specific Variables

### Description

`.Platform` is a list with functions and variables as components. This provides means to write OS portable R code.

### Usage

    .Platform
    Platform()

### Details

Currently, `.Platform <- Platform()` when R starts up.

### Value

`.Platform` is list with at least the following components:

`OS.type` | character, giving the Operating System (family) of the computer. One of the following values is returned: `"unix"`, `"mac"`, or `"windows"` (in historical order).
`file.sep` | character, giving the file separator, used on your platform, e.g., `"/"` on Unix alikes.
`dynlib.ext` | character, giving the file name extension of dynamically loadable libraries, e.g., `".dll"` on Windows.
`GUI` | character, giving the type of GUI in use, or `"unknown"` if no GUI can be assumed.
`endian` | character, `"big"` or `"little"`, giving the endianness of the processor in use.

### See Also

`Sys.info` which gives more details about the OS, `system` for invoking platform-specific system commands.

### Examples

    ## Note: this can be done in a system-independent way by file.info()$isdir
    if(.Platform$OS.type == "unix") {
       system.test <- function(...) { system(paste("test", ...)) == 0 }
       dir.exists <- function(dir) sapply(dir, function(d)system.test("-d", d))
       dir.exists(c(R.home(), "/tmp", "~", "/NO"))# > T T T F
    }

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