How to check if a directory exists and how to create and create if doesn t exist

Question

I write R scripts that generate large amount of output.

In my view, I find it clean ti put this output in it's own directory(s).

Below is my approach to find out the existence of a directory and move into it, or create the directory and then move into it.

Is there any better approach?

Main_Directory <- "c:/Users/xyz/main/dir"
Sub_Directory <- "FinalOutputDirectory"

if (file.exists(Sub_Directory)){
    setwd(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))
} else {
    dir.create(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))
    setwd(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))
}

Answer 1

You can use showWarnings = FALSE

NOTE:  showWarnings = FALSE, hides warnings such as the directory being uncreateable.

dir.create(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory), showWarnings = FALSE)
setwd(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))

NOTE: dir.create()  does not crash if the directory exists, but it just prints out a warning.

dir.create(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))
setwd(file.path(Main_Directory, Sub_Directory))