pattern matching a filename in R

Question

This is probably real simple, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it.

I have an application in R (Shiny) where a user uploads to the application a *.zip file that contains all the components of an ESRI shapefile. I unpack these files into their own directory. This folder then, may or may not, contain a *.shp.xml file. At some point in my R code, I need to find the exact name of the *.shp file that has been unpacked, and distinguish it from the *.shp.xml file. How do I write the expression that will do that? I was thinking to use list.files, but I am unsure how to write the rest of the expression.

thanks!

Answer 1

With R regex patterns the "$" has special meaning as the end of a character element (and the 'dots' need to be escaped with \\, so

shpfils <- list.files(path, pattern="\\.shp$")

Answer 2

This should isolate your file - Sys.glob("*shp") as compared to Sys.glob("*shp*") which should give both the files or Sys.glob("*shp.xml") which should give the .shp.xml file