Platform                package: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
     }

