What is a fool-proof way of permanently setting R working directory?

Question

There is plenty of information on how to change the default working directory in R (every time R or RStudio is started, the working directory would change back to default, s

Answer 1

What about something like

set_default_wd <- function(wd = getwd()) {
  text <- paste0(
    'local({ setwd("', wd, '") })')
  ##
  if (Sys.info()["sysname"] == "Windows") {
    write(
      text,
      file = paste0(Sys.getenv("HOME"), "\\.Rprofile"),
      append = TRUE)
  } else {
    write(
      text,
      file = paste0(Sys.getenv("HOME"), "/.Rprofile"),
      append = TRUE)
  }
}
##
#R> set_default_wd()  #set_default_wd("some/file/path")

---

This should work on Windows and Unix-like systems, and avoid any permissions issues. Really the only requirement on the user's end is to specify a valid file path, which they should (hopefully) be able to work out.

---

It may be worthwhile to have the option of overwriting the $HOME/.Rprofile (instead of forcing lines to be appended) in case a malformed file path is given, etc...

set_default_wd <- function(wd = getwd(), overwrite = FALSE) {
  text <- paste0(
    'local({ setwd("', wd, '") })')
  ##
  if (Sys.info()["sysname"] == "Windows") {
    write(
      text,
      file = paste0(Sys.getenv("HOME"), "\\.Rprofile"),
      append = !overwrite)
  } else {
    write(
      text,
      file = paste0(Sys.getenv("HOME"), "/.Rprofile"),
      append = !overwrite)
  }
}