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Comment by Yeikoff | Hacker News Reader

rstudioapi::getActiveDocumentContext()$path

I believe thats is what you are looking for.

Yes, and now I want to also make it work when not invoked from RStudio; and for various R version. So now I find myself wrapping all these options into a function, which I have to copy for every 10 line script. So then I make a package for it; or use the functions in someone else's package and add a dependency which I'm not sure will still work a year from now.

Or I could just use a sane language and go home in time for dinner.

(I mean I know about all the solutions and non-solutions; I've looked into this at least a dozen times over the last 5+ years. My point is that this shouldn't have been an issue in the first place.)

You are absolutely right, but then either you first post was missworded or I missunderstood the issue (most likely the latter), as there is a way to know the directory of the script.

100% agree with R is not a sane language.

Ah yes now I see - I said 'there's no way to find the current script' which isn't true. So that's probably what the others in this thread are also objecting against :) I guess what I meant was 'there's no same way' or 'look at how hard it is to do this tiny thingy which anyone with a programming background would find so basic, they wouldn't even consider it might not exist'. So yeah, I did screw up on making my point there.

So you need to have a specific IDE installed for this to work?

Nope! Base R works great. Old-school vi to edit scripts, and R base installation to run them (or REPL around). Of course, the IDEs do offer a lot of support, and RStudio is great for making your R functions into packages that are easy to share.

That was in reference to the rstudioapi package for finding the path of the current file, which I've just checked out needs a running Rstudio session to work.

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