R: Open a File or URL using Windows File Associations

shell.exec {base} | R Documentation

## Open a File or URL using Windows File Associations

### Description

Opens the specified file or URL using the application specified in the Windows file associations.

### Usage

    shell.exec(file)

### Arguments

`file` | file or URL to be opened.

### Details

The path in `file` should be a full path.

If the path in `file` is not a full path, it is interpreted relative to the current working directory, but in R versions 2.13.0 and earlier it was interpreted relative to the R home directory. To be interpreted as relative, the path also needs to use backslashes as separators (at least in Windows 10).

Encoded file:// URLs should be in the Windows standard form, e.g. `"file:///c:/path/to/file.txt"`.

### Value

No value, but informative error messages will be given if the operation fails.

### Author(s)

B. D. Ripley and Duncan Murdoch

### See Also

`system`, `shell`

### Examples

    ## Not run:
    ## the space should not be encoded here
    shell.exec("C:\\Program Files\\BreezeSys\\BreezeBrowser\\Breezebrowser.htm")
    shell.exec("C:/Program Files/BreezeSys/BreezeBrowser/Breezebrowser.htm")
    shell.exec("file:///C:/Program Files/BreezeSys/BreezeBrowser/Breezebrowser.htm")

    ## End(Not run)

[Package base version 4.0.5 Index]