R: Opens an HTML document using the OS default HTML browser

System$openBrowser {R.utils} | R Documentation

## Opens an HTML document using the OS default HTML browser

### Description

Opens an HTML document using the OS default HTML browser. Note that this call is dependent on the operating system (currently only Windows and Unix are supported). The document given by `query` can either be a local file or a web page. If the `query` was given as non-url string, i.e. as a standard file pathname, the method will automatically check if the file exists and conform the query to a correct url starting with `file:`. The used url will be returned as a string.

Any suggestion how implement this on Apple system are welcome!

### Usage

    ## Static method (use this):
    ## System$openBrowser(query, ...)

    ## Don't use the below:
    ## S3 method for class 'System'
    openBrowser(this, query, ...)

### Arguments

`query` | The path to document to be opened by the browser.

### Details

It is hard to create a good cross-platform `openBrowser()` method, but here is one try.

In the following text `<browser>` is the value returned by `getOption("browser")` and `<url>` is the URL conformed query, which starts with either `file:` or `http:`.

On a Windows system, if `<browser>` is not `NULL`, first

`shell.exec(<browser> <url>)`

is tried. If this fails, then

`shell.exec(<url>)`

is tried. Using this latter approach will not guarantee that an HTML browser will open the url, e.g. depending on the Windows file associations, a `*.txt` file might be opened by NotePad. However, it will most likely open something. If `<browser>` contains spaces, make sure it is quoted.

On Unix systems, `system()` will be used to call:

`<browser> -remote "openURL(<url>)" 2> /dev/null || <browser> <url> &`

### Value

Returns the url of the `query`.

### Author(s)

Henrik Bengtsson

### See Also

For more information see `System`.

### Examples

    ## Not run:
      System$openBrowser("http://www.r-project.org/")

    ## End(Not run)

[Package R.utils version 2.7.0 Index]