Access Windows Registry inside R

Question

How can I access the windows registry inside R. For example, I want to access the folder:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\R-core\R\3.0.2]

and the key called "InstallPath"

to get:

"C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-3.0.2"

Many thanks!

What do you really want: to be able to access the registry or to be able to get the path to the R executable? If you just want the path to the R executable, what do you plan to do with that? — MrFlick, May 29 '14 at 15:13
Also note that one can install R without installing a registry entry so you can't be 100% sure that that registry entry exists. — G. Grothendieck, May 29 '14 at 15:37
The R path was just an example. I want to be able to get a configuration key of which idiom is currently being used in a program. — Daniel Bonetti, May 29 '14 at 17:04

Josh O'Brien · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-29T15:31:01.040

6

You could use readRegistry().

On my machine:

fp <- file.path("SOFTWARE", "R-core", "R", "3.1.0", fsep="\\")
readRegistry(fp, "HLM")  ## "HLM" eventually resolves to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
# $InstallPath
# [1] "C:\\R\\R-current"

(Also, for future reference, in this case you could probably have found that out with a quick call to apropos("registry") or even apropos("reg").)

edited May 29 '14 at 15:31

answered May 29 '14 at 15:13

Josh O'Brien

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 29 '14 at 15:11

From your question it is not obvious why you'd need to access the registry. If you just want the home directory of your R installation, you can use R.home(). Alternatively you could use Sys.getenv("R_HOME"). If that doesn't give you what you need (I can't test on Windows right now), maybe one of the other environment variables gives you what you need.

Access Windows Registry inside R

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