Package Relative Paths in R

Question

I've written a few functions for a package that use relative paths like:

"./data/foobar.rds"

Here's an example function:

foo <- function(x) { 
x <- readRDS("./data/bar.rds")
return(x)
}

Now, if I were to be working in the development path of the package, this works as I expect. But when I load the package, this path uses the current working directory rather than the relative path of the package.

How does one set it up such that the path for functions within a package maintain their within the package relative paths?

Answer 1

As Andrie notes, you can use system.file, which "finds the full file names of files in packages etc."

x <- readRDS(system.file("help", "aliases.rds", package="MASS"))