A quick basic tip which can come in handy whether you need to rapidly remove files from a directory:
junk <- dir(path="your_path", pattern="your_pattern") # ?dir file.remove(junk) # ?file.remove
Compress multiple files/folders in separate zip files:
This tip came handy to me when I had to compress into separate .cbz files (zip files with an other extension) a vast collection of folders containing scans for different numbers of a comic book series (to create .cbz files instead of zip files, just substitute .cbz to .zip in the following code).
l=basename(list.dirs(recursive=F)) for (i in 1:length(l)) zip(paste(l[i],".zip",sep=""),files=l[i]) # ?zip
Clearly, for advanced needs, you can use system() and all the unix tools installed onto your machine.
Note: This post was updated on 1/5/2012
