Detection and Localization of Executable Files • locatexec

The package helps locate external programs such as “python”, “Google Chrome”, “node.js” and “LibreOffice” so that they can be called easily from R.

This makes it easier to call these programs from R across various operating systems.

library(locatexec)

if(exec_available("node")){
  message(exec_version("node"))
  message(node_exec())
}
#> 26.0.0
#> /opt/homebrew/bin/node

exec	exec_fun	available	version	path
node	`node_exec()`	TRUE	26.0.0	/opt/homebrew/bin/node
chrome	`chrome_exec()`	TRUE	148.0.7778.179	/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
python	`python_exec()`	TRUE	3.9.6	/usr/bin/python3
libreoffice	`libreoffice_exec()`	TRUE	26.2.3.2	/opt/homebrew/bin/soffice
excel	`excel_exec()`	TRUE	16.109.1	/Applications/Microsoft Excel.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Excel
powerpoint	`powerpoint_exec()`	TRUE	16.109.1	/Applications/Microsoft PowerPoint.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft PowerPoint
pip	`pip_exec()`	TRUE	21.2.4	/usr/bin/pip3
firefox	`firefox_exec()`	TRUE	151.0.1	/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
npm	`npm_exec()`	TRUE	11.12.1	/opt/homebrew/bin/npm
word	`word_exec()`	TRUE	16.109.1	/Applications/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
air	`air_exec()`	TRUE	0.8.0	/Users/username/.local/bin/air
pandoc	`pandoc_exec()`	TRUE	3.9.0.2	/opt/homebrew/bin/pandoc

Motivations

This was motivated by the need for tools similar to rmarkdown::pandoc_available() and rmarkdown::pandoc_exec() but allowing to locate external programs other than pandoc.

I needed to call these programs from R without pulling in heavy dependencies.

You can install the CRAN version with:

install.packages("locatexec")