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Invoke a System Command

Syntax

system(command, intern=FALSE)

Arguments

command the system command to be invoked, as a string.
intern a logical, indicates whether to make the output of the command an R object.

Description

system invokes the system command specified by command. If intern is TRUE then popen is used to invoke the command and the output collected, line by line, into an R string vector which is returned as the value of system. If intern is FALSE then the C function system is used to invoke the command and the value returned by system is the exit status of this function. This function provides users with the ability to invoke system commands on whatever platform they are using.

Examples

# list all files in the current directory # using the -F flag system("ls -F") # t1 contains a vector of strings, each one # representing a separate line of output from who t1 <- system("who", TRUE)