Error setwd() "cannot change working directory"

Question

I get "cannot change working directory" error when I try to set up my working directory:

setwd("C:\Users\alimo\Desktop\DataVisualizationwithggplot2.R")

*Error: '\U' used without hex digits in character string starting ""C:\U"*

then I ran:

options(PACKAGE_MAINFOLDER="C:/Users/...")

and replaced all "" to "/" but I got this error this time:

cannot change working directory

Answer 1

Yes, writing a path to a file or directory can sometimes be a bit painful, especially when you move across different platforms!

setwd() sets the working directory, so it means you need to specify a directory, not a file.

And whenever I'm not sure about the single/double (back)slashes, I like to use file.path() from base R, which adds a correct delimiter in a platform-independent way:

file.path("~", "myfolder", "myfile.R")

So for your case:

setwd(file.path("C:", "Users", "alimo", "Desktop"))