Can R cause a file to be opened by another program?

Question

This is a bit of a strange question, but I thought people here might be interested.

Is it possible to have R cause a file to be opened in another program? For example, could you write a command line that would cause a music file to start playing? The potential application would be that after a model is finished running, music would start to play, alerting you to the model's completion.

What tune would you play to celebrate your program finishing? The End by The Doors? Probably not joyous enough. — Richie Cotton, Aug 05 '11 at 12:11
I think that [this could be appropriate](http://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0). — Marek, Aug 05 '11 at 12:17
Ride of the Valkyries is always good for the first run of R in the morning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpvLCptAHT8 — Iterator, Aug 05 '11 at 23:45
This is a good question. Sending an email or SMS to a cell phone is very useful when finishing a long job or when awaiting important results. — Iterator, Aug 05 '11 at 23:48
Ha! You guys are the best! I definitely like Ride of the Valkyries. :) — Laura, Aug 07 '11 at 07:09
It would be even better if you could play something sad when your program fails. — Laura, Aug 07 '11 at 07:09

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '11 at 07:56

In addition to system, on Windows at least you can use shell.exec which will open the file using the application specified in the Windows file associations. For example, shell.exec("file.txt") will open a text file in your favourite text editor, shell.exec("file.mp3") will launch a media player, etc.

Marek · Answer 2 · 2021-10-25T14:59:51.347

7

There is audio package which allow to play wave files:

require(audio)
wave_file <- dir("C:/Windows/Media", pattern="\\.wav$", full.names=TRUE)[1] # some random windows wave file
f <- load.wave(wave_file)
play(f)

edited Oct 25 '21 at 14:59

answered Aug 05 '11 at 08:19

Marek

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This is pretty cool, but I'm having some trouble opening the .wav files. I get this error message: Error in load.wave(wave_file) : unable to open file 'chimes.wav' – Laura Aug 08 '11 at 00:09

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 05 '11 at 07:18

6

You can do this by calling the system() function.

answered Aug 05 '11 at 07:18

David Heffernan

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Can R cause a file to be opened by another program?

3 Answers3