Ошибка в setwd невозможно сменить рабочий каталог

---

Одна ошибка, с которой вы можете столкнуться в R:

Error in setwd("C:/Users/UserName/Desktop") : 
 cannot change working directory

Эта ошибка возникает, когда вы пытаетесь установить рабочий каталог в R, но неправильно указываете часть пути к файлу.

В этом руководстве рассказывается, как именно исправить эту ошибку.

Как воспроизвести ошибку

Предположим, я пытаюсь установить следующий рабочий каталог в R:

#attempt to set working directory
setwd("C:/Users/Bob/Documents/My Folder Name")

Error in setwd("C:/Users/Bob/Documents/My Folder Name") : 
 cannot change working directory

Я получаю сообщение об ошибке, потому что эта папка не существует на моем компьютере.

Как исправить ошибку

Самый простой способ исправить эту ошибку — изменить путь к файлу, чтобы он указывал на правильную папку:

#set working directory
setwd("C:/Users/Bob/Documents/Correct Folder Name")

Обратите внимание, что я не получаю сообщение об ошибке, потому что R смог успешно изменить рабочий каталог.

Я могу подтвердить, что рабочий каталог успешно изменился, используя функцию getwd() для получения текущего рабочего каталога:

#get current working directory
getwd()

"C:/Users/Bob/Documents/Correct Folder Name"

Распространенные причины ошибок

Существует несколько причин, по которым вы можете получить это сообщение об ошибке в R. Общие причины включают:

• Вы просто неправильно указали путь к файлу.
• Вы включили недопустимые символы в путь к файлу.
• У вас нет разрешения на доступ к пути к файлу.

Если вы столкнулись с этой ошибкой, обязательно проверьте эти три распространенные проблемы и при необходимости исправьте их.

Дополнительные ресурсы

В следующих руководствах объясняется, как исправить другие распространенные ошибки в R:

Как исправить: NA, введенные принуждением
Как исправить: отсутствует значение там, где нужно true/false
Как исправить: неправильное количество индексов в матрице
Как исправить: количество элементов для замены не кратно длине замены

The “cannot change working directory” R file error message is an odd little message in that while it is a coding problem it may not result from an R code mistake. Rather it is a problem that arises from trying to change a root directory to a non-existing name. This makes it an unusual problem and fortunately one that is easy to fix within the R console.

The circumstances of this problem.

The “cannot change working directory” error message occurs when using the setwd() function to change the working directory in the format of setwd(“

/”) or entering an invalid data directory name. Normally a file is placed in the default working directory. However, there are circumstances where you might want to change the current working directory within your r script file. This has the advantage that it automatically resets itself when the project or dataset is reloaded. As a result, it is a handy tool for saving and loading files from a different directory path other than the default directory path. This comes in handy when you know the file location for 2 different files or more in the project directory.

What is causing this problem?

The “cannot change working directory” error message is caused by an operating system not recognizing “

/” as indicating a root directory or pointing to an invalid folder name. As a result, the software is looking for a non-existent folder. This causes it to return this message because it cannot change the working directory.

In this case, we got the message because we entered an invalid folder. In most systems using setwd(“

/”) will simply change the working directory to the root directory. However, there are some systems where “

/” is not recognized resulting in this message. Fortunately, small a change in syntax can fix the problem.

How to fix this problem.

Fixing this problem is simply a matter of eliminating the “

/” reference from your script. Because the setwd() function is the set working directory function, you can use it to set the current directory in your code. All you need to do is set it to the file path folder you are looking for. The getwd() function is similar to the dose “dir” command except that it gets you to the current working directory in your r console workspace.

To get the same effect as this example R code you simply need to substitute the name of the specific project directory you want to go to in the character string here in place of “

/”. To get the current working directory just use the getwd() function and make the needed adjustments to get the file location folder or absolute filepath that you want as your current directory.

In this example, we simply define the working directory as “C:/Users/Owner/Documents” to make the desired change. It may not be as elegant or short as the other version but it works. In the situation where you have an erroneous folder or file system name simply correct it in the home directory so that it is a valid name.

This is a simple problem to solve but you are only likely to get it by miss typing a folder name. If you get it for “

/” then you just have to specify where you want to put it and it will work. In both cases, you will fix the problem.

R Error cannot change working directory

Источник

R Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory (2 Examples)

In this article you’ll learn how to deal with the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” in the R programming language.

Table of contents:

Let’s take a look at some R codes in action:

Example 1: Reproduce the Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory

In this section, I’ll explain how to replicate the error message “cannot change working directory” in R.

Let’s assume that we want to set our working directory to a folder called “Some Folder” on our Desktop using the setwd function.

Then, we might try to do that as shown below:

setwd(«C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/Some Folder») # Try to use non-existing folder # Error in setwd(«C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/Some Folder») : # cannot change working directory

Unfortunately, the RStudio console returns the error message “cannot change working directory”.

The reason for this is that the directory we are trying to access does not exist. We might have specified the folder name wrong, or the path before the folder name is not existing.

Example 2: Fix the Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory

We can solve this problem by specifying the path correctly. In this example, the problem was that the folder “Some Folder” does not exist on my Desktop. For that reason, I can avoid the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” by setting the working directory directly to my Desktop:

setwd(«C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/») # Properly specify setwd

Executing the previous R code does not lead to any errors.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Do you need more information on the R code of this post? Then you may want to watch the following video tutorial of my YouTube channel. In the video, I illustrate the R code of this tutorial:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

In addition, you may read some of the other articles of this homepage.

You have learned in this tutorial how to avoid the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” in the R programming language. In case you have any additional questions, let me know in the comments.

Hi,
I am getting the ‘Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory”. As per your advise, I tried fixing tge path as suggested. On trying to read the csv file I am trying to load, I now get the error message,’ could not find function “read_csv”

I’m sorry for the delayed response, I just came back from vacation. Do you still need help with your error?

As always only very basic and not useful information. Thank you for nothing!

You could share your code and explain your problem in some more detail, instead of just being rude. I’m happy to help.

I can’t change directory using setwd(). My path is D:/GoogleAnalyticsCertificate/Capstone Project/Fitabase Data 4.12.16-5.12.16/. Thank you for your help.

Error is as shown below.
> setwd(“D:/GoogleAnalyticsCertificate/Capstone Project/Fitabase Data 4.12.16-5.12.16/”)
Error in setwd(“D:/GoogleAnalyticsCertificate/Capstone Project/Fitabase Data 4.12.16-5.12.16/”) :
cannot change working directory

Your code seems to be correct, so I assume there must be some spelling errors in your path. Are you certain that you have spelled the folder names etc. correctly?

Do you have any advice on this error when referencing a server path/file?

Could you please share the code that returns this error?

Hey, Joachim
I’m trying to change the directory on my android phone in the “R compiler”. Actually, I’ve no clue how to write the right pass to the needed folder ( the primary storage/r/lab1)
I’ll be crazy grateful, if u can help me with this.
Best regards,
Susan.

Unfortunately, I have never done this myself. However, I have recently created a Facebook discussion group where people can ask questions about R programming and statistics. Could you post your question there? This way, others can contribute/read as well: https://www.facebook.com/groups/statisticsglobe

I am using r-studio on Fedora36. My problem is with Bioconductor packages it seems because most packages upon installation throws me the “unable to write to path” and “can’t update packages” error messages. But the packages that it lists are not the package i want to install (maybe prerequisites). Now i tried to start rstudio from the terminal with sudo and the problem ofc doesn’t occur it can overwrite anything it want. But the first problem with this workaround is that working directory is locked (/root) (at least i cannot seem to change it).
If you have any thoughts on this thanks in advance. Probably i am missing a very simple solution.
Best regards

Unfortunately, I don’t have experience with Fedora36. However, I have recently created a Facebook discussion group where people can ask questions about R programming and statistics. Could you post your question there? This way, others can contribute/read as well, and maybe somebody in the group knows a solution: https://www.facebook.com/groups/statisticsglobe

Hi – I am new to R and coding in general. I am receiving an error like the one below.

Error in setwd(“/Users/nicolenappi/Desktop/Harris Autumn 2022/Stats/Mini Assignments/2”) :
cannot change working directory

Below is my file path

#/Users/nicolenappi/Desktop/Harris Autumn 2022/Stats/Mini Assignments/2

What is your operating system? Are you working with Windows or MAC?

am using MAC and I keep getting the same error as below when trying to change directory.
setwd(“/Users/gasnaken/Desktop/Capstone P”)
Error in setwd(“/Users/gasnaken/Desktop/Capstone P”) :
cannot change working directory

Please excuse the late response. I was on a long holiday so unfortunately I wasn’t able to reply sooner. Still need help with your code?

I do, I’m having the same issue as them and am on mac.
My code is setwd(“/Users/jaiden/Desktop/CoffeeOrder”)
My path file is the same Users/jaiden/Desktop/CoffeeOrder

Sorry for the late response. Do you still need help?

setwd(“C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/”) # Properly specify setwd
Error in setwd(“C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/”) :
cannot change working directory

As you have suggested to use this code : setwd(“C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/”) # Properly specify setwd
to solve the error (file, “rt”)
I just get the above error instead
Error in setwd(“C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/”) :
cannot change working directory
Can you help me out with that?
Thank you in advance

“C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/” is a placeholder for a path that works on my computer. You would have to insert your own file path instead. You can learn more about file paths here.

Источник

Error in setwd(x) : cannot change working directory #51

Software:
Windows 7 (32-bit)
R-3.0.2
RStudio (Version 0.98.501)
reports 0.2.0

First time trying to use reports package on new machine with Windows 7. Never run into this error (below) using Windows XP. Thanks.

library(reports)
new_report(«new»)
Error in setwd(x) : cannot change working directory

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

Is the session fresh? Does the path to the out directory contain spaces?

It was a fresh session. Unless I’ve specified otherwise, the out directory is the same as the working directory, correct? If so, then there are not any spaces. This morning, I had a thought to try creating a new report from the R GUI, rather than from within RStudio. While I had RStudio running, I started the R GUI, loaded the reports package, and typed «new_report(‘new’)». Suddenly, that project opened in RStudio. I tested knitting the .*Rmd file and producing the other outputs, and it all worked fine. I happy to work with the 15-second extra step, but still don’t know is causing the original issue in RStudio. Weird. Thanks.

Hmm. I have not updated to the newest RStudio because I noticed cut and paste issues as has been the case with previous version on some Windows machines.

I will leave this issue open and test this myself with the newest RStudio and try to track the problem down. Sounds, at the moment, to be something RStudio is doing in this latest release.

Can I ask you to test some of this theory by installing an older version of RStudio and try the same procedure. Here is the version I am using:

Hmm just tried 0.98.501 and there were no problems. In RStudio what does getwd() give you?

Strange. Since you didn’t run into a similar problem with RStudio 0.98, I wonder if it has something to do with Windows 7 or my new machine. At any rate, getwd() gives me the correct (default) working directory: «C:/Program Files/R/R-3.0.2». Also, from within RStudio, I can change the working directory with setwd(). Like I mentioned, for now, I can use the R GUI to set up the report directory, then do the actual work with RStudio. Thanks.

Can you try setting the working directory to somewhere other than the default working directory? Perhaps your desktop?

Источник

Error in setwd(mainDir) : cannot change working directory #4248

Having issues setting the output folder for images generated by the RPlotHist stored procedure. I’ve created C:tempplots on my computer. Does the error have something to do with isolation level changes in SQL Server 2019? (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/advanced-analytics/install/sql-server-machine-learning-services-2019?view=sql-server-ver15)

Document Details

⚠ Do not edit this section. It is required for docs.microsoft.com ➟ GitHub issue linking.

• ID: ddb4497c-66d7-b890-bb98-fb4bdb9e32d6
• Version Independent ID: 3794acda-9e96-834e-9931-c8e115014db9
• Content: R + T-SQL tutorial: Explore data — SQL Server Machine Learning Services
• Content Source: docs/advanced-analytics/tutorials/sqldev-explore-and-visualize-the-data.md
• Product: sql
• Technology: machine-learning
• GitHub Login: @dphansen
• Microsoft Alias: davidph

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

@awilbert Thank you for opening a GitHub issue. Would you be able to provide us with the error/output message that you get? Thanks.

Error returned in messages window:
Msg 39004, Level 16, State 20, Line 1
A ‘R’ script error occurred during execution of ‘sp_execute_external_script’ with HRESULT 0x80004004.
Msg 39019, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
An external script error occurred:
Error in setwd(mainDir) : cannot change working directory
Calls: source -> withVisible -> eval -> eval -> setwd

Error in execution. Check the output for more information.
Error in eval(ei, envir) :
Error in execution. Check the output for more information.
Calls: runScriptFile -> source -> withVisible -> eval -> eval -> .Call
Execution halted

——
SQL Server log just says:
SQL Server received abort message and abort execution for major error : 18 and minor error : 42

@awilbert Thanks. We will investigate and get back to you.

@awilbert You are correct. This is due to the isolation level changes in SQL Server 2019.

The issue can be resolved by granting Read & execute permissions to ALL APPLICATION PACKGES to the folder you are trying to change their working directory to:

1. In File Explorer, right click on the folder you want to use as working directory, and select Properties.
2. Select Security and click Edit. to change permissions.
3. Click Add.
4. Make sure the From this location is the local computer name.
5. Enter ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES in Enter the object names to select and click Check Names. Click OK.
6. Select Read & execute under the Allow column. Click OK and OK.

I will update the docs to point out this change. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Источник

The working directory in R is the folder where you are working. Hence, it’s the place (the environment) where you have to store your files of your project in order to load them or where your R objects will be saved.

Getwd function

In case you want to check the directory of your R session, the function getwd will print the current working directory path as a string. Hence, the output is the folder where all your files will be saved.

# Find the path of your working directory
getwd()

Set working directory

Setwd function

If you are wondering how to change the working directory in R you just need to call the setwd function, specifying as argument the path of the new working directory folder.

# Set the path of your working directory
setwd("MyPath")
setwd("My/Path") # Equivalent

In case you encountered the error: ‘unexpected input in setwd’, make sure to use ‘’ or ‘/’ instead of ‘’ when writing your directory path.

There are options if you don’t want to change the slash manually:

On the one hand, you could make use of the back2ForwardSlash function of the sos package as follows.

# install.packages(sos)
library(sos)

x <- back2ForwardSlash()
# (Enter or paste the path)
setwd(x)

On the other hand, since R 4.0.0 you can type:

 setwd(r"(MyPath)")

Change working directory in RStudio

In order to create a new RStudio project go to Session → Set Working Directory and select the option you prefer. You can set to the project directory, source file location, files pane location or set a custom path.

Error: Cannot change working directory

There are several reasons that doesn’t allow to change the working directory.

• Check you didn’t misspelled the path.
• Make sure your path doesn’t contain invalid characters, as accents.
• Make sure you have admin permissions.
• Use the double backslash or single slash.

Create a RStudio project

RStudio projects are very useful to organize our scripts in folders. Thus, when opening a project it will contain all the files corresponding to it. Also, the project folder will be set as the working directory when you open it, so everything you save will be saved in the project folder.

Navigate to File → New Project and create a new project from a New Directory or from an Existing Directory.

If you selected the option New Directory you will have to select New Project and then write a project name and path.

Once done, a .Rproj file will be created and you will be able to have a project with all your files without the need of setting a working directory each time you open R.

Create a folder inside working directory

After setting up your working directory, you can create a new folder with the dir.create function inside the main directory. For instance, you could create a new folder, set it as new working directory and come back to the main working directory the following way:

# Save your current working directory
old_wd <- getwd()

# Create a new folder
dir.create("new_folder")

# (Do your work)

# Come back to the main directory
setwd(old_wd)

Moreover, you can create nested folders with the recursive argument and the file.path function. We will give a more detailed explanation of the file.path function on its corresponding section.

# Create a new folder inside other
dir.create(file.path("folder", "child_folder"), recursive = TRUE)

Remove a folder inside working directory

In case you need to remove a folder, you can call the unlink function. It should be noted that setting the recursive argument to TRUE will remove all files inside the folder.

unlink("my_folder_name", recursive = TRUE)

List files of the working directory

Once you set up your working directory, you may want to know which files are inside it. For that purpose just call the dir or the list.files functions as illustrated in the following example.

dir()
list.files() # Equivalent

Create a file in working directory

If you need to create a new R file inside your working directory, you can use the file.create function and specify the name of the new file as follows:

# Creating a new R file
file.create("new_file.R")

It should be noted that this command is not commonly used, as you can press Ctrl + Shift + n in RStudio or just create a new file manually. The main use of this is command is to create a batch of new R files when working on a large project.

Remove a file in working directory

In the same way as creating a new file, you can remove or delete a file inside your directory with the file.remove function typing:

# Deleting the file 'new_file.R'
file.remove("new_file.R")

Get file path and info

You can also check a file path with the file.path function and even obtain information about some file using the file.info function.

# Creating some file
file.create("my_file.R")

# Path of some file
file.path("my_file.R")

# Info about our R file
file.info("my_file.R")

           size  isdir  mode         mtime               ctime               atime       exe
new_file.R  0    FALSE  666  2020-03-22 16:02:54 2020-03-22 16:02:54 2020-03-22 16:02:54  no

Copy files of your working directory

If needed, you can also copy and rename an R file in your directory. For that purpose, use the file.copy function. As an example, you can copy the file named ‘my_file.R’ and rename the copy as ‘my_copied_file.R’.

file.copy("my_file.R", "my_copied_file.R")

The “cannot change working directory” R file error message is an odd little message in that while it is a coding problem it may not result from an R code mistake. Rather it is a problem that arises from trying to change a root directory to a non-existing name. This makes it an unusual problem and fortunately one that is easy to fix within the R console.

The circumstances of this problem.

The “cannot change working directory” error message occurs when using the setwd() function to change the working directory in the format of setwd(“~/”) or entering an invalid data directory name. Normally a file is placed in the default working directory. However, there are circumstances where you might want to change the current working directory within your r script file. This has the advantage that it automatically resets itself when the project or dataset is reloaded. As a result, it is a handy tool for saving and loading files from a different directory path other than the default directory path. This comes in handy when you know the file location for 2 different files or more in the project directory.

What is causing this problem?

The “cannot change working directory” error message is caused by an operating system not recognizing “~/” as indicating a root directory or pointing to an invalid folder name. As a result, the software is looking for a non-existent folder. This causes it to return this message because it cannot change the working directory.

# r error cannot change working directory r code
> getwd()
[1] "C:/Users/Owner/Documents/R/error test"
> setwd("C:/Users/Owner/Documents/R/test")
Error in setwd("C:/Users/Owner/Documents/R/test") :
cannot change working directory

In this case, we got the message because we entered an invalid folder. In most systems using setwd(“~/”) will simply change the working directory to the root directory. However, there are some systems where “~/” is not recognized resulting in this message. Fortunately, small a change in syntax can fix the problem.

How to fix this problem.

Fixing this problem is simply a matter of eliminating the “~/” reference from your script. Because the setwd() function is the set working directory function, you can use it to set the current directory in your code. All you need to do is set it to the file path folder you are looking for. The getwd() function is similar to the dose “dir” command except that it gets you to the current working directory in your r console workspace.

# r error cannot change working directory solution code
> getwd()
[1] "C:/Users/Owner/Documents/R/error test"
> setwd("~/")
> getwd()
[1] "C:/Users/Owner/Documents"

To get the same effect as this example R code you simply need to substitute the name of the specific project directory you want to go to in the character string here in place of “~/”. To get the current working directory just use the getwd() function and make the needed adjustments to get the file location folder or absolute filepath that you want as your current directory.

# cannot change working directory r error solution example code
> getwd()
[1] "C:/Users/Owner/Documents/R/error test"
> setwd("C:/Users/Owner/Documents")
> getwd()
[1] "C:/Users/Owner/Documents"

In this example, we simply define the working directory as “C:/Users/Owner/Documents” to make the desired change. It may not be as elegant or short as the other version but it works. In the situation where you have an erroneous folder or file system name simply correct it in the home directory so that it is a valid name.

This is a simple problem to solve but you are only likely to get it by miss typing a folder name. If you get it for “~/” then you just have to specify where you want to put it and it will work. In both cases, you will fix the problem.

R Error cannot change working directory

Related Errors:

• File Error – Cannot open the connection
• Unable to establish Connection with the R session