On 14/05/2014 23:04, Andreas Leha wrote:
Hi all,
how do I find out about the filename, the currently open (let's say pdf)
device is writing to?
If I find 'dev.cur()' returning 'pdf 3' when I expect 'nulldevice 1' I
would like to know, which file that pdf device is actually targeting.
Any help for my poor organization is highly appreciated...
You cannot know this for an arbitrary device, at least not from R.
Most files in R are opened with the C call fopen() and thereafter
referred to by a file handle: the file can be renamed, unlinked ...
whilst the handle is open. Some system utilities[*] may be able to tell
you what filepaths are/were associated with file handles open in a
process, but it cannot be done portably.
However, in R-devel there is the possibility of a device recording extra
information about itself. See the NEWS item
• Graphics devices can add attributes to their description in
.Device and .Devices. Several of those included with R use a
"filepath" attribute.
AFAIR the pdf() device does: let's see
> pdf('/tmp/foo.pdf')
> dev.cur()
pdf
2
> .Devices
[[1]]
[1] "null device"
[[2]]
[1] "pdf"
attr(,"filepath")
[1] "/tmp/foo.pdf"
There is at least one exception: for historical reasons locked in by
undocumented use in package tkrplot, the win.metafile() device does
include the file path in the device 'name'.
[*] They have existed at least on Linux, Windows and OS X.
--
Brian D. Ripley, rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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