Getting path of an R script

Question

Is there a way to programmatically find the path of an R script inside the script itself?

I am asking this because I have several scripts that use RGtk2 and load a GUI from a .glade file.

In these scripts I am obliged to put a setwd("path/to/the/script") instruction at the beginning, otherwise the .glade file (which is in the same directory) will not be found.

This is fine, but if I move the script in a different directory or to another computer I have to change the path. I know, it's not a big deal, but it would be nice to have something like:

setwd(getScriptPath())

So, does a similar function exist?

Answer 1

If you wrap your code in a package, you can always query parts of the package directory.
Here is an example from the RGtk2 package:

> system.file("ui", "demo.ui", package="RGtk2")
[1] "C:/opt/R/library/RGtk2/ui/demo.ui"
> 

You can do the same with a directory inst/glade/ in your sources which will become a directory glade/ in the installed package -- and system.file() will compute the path for you when installed, irrespective of the OS.

Answer 2

Use source(..., chdir = T)