How to build a dendrogram from a directory tree?

Question

Given a root absolute directory path. How do I generate a dendrogram object of all path\'s below it so that I can visualize the directory tree with R?

Suppose the fo

Answer 1

Here's a possible approach to get what you originally asked for which is a system like tree. This will give a data.tree object that's pretty flexible and could be made to plot like you might want but it's not entirely clear to me what you want:

path <- c(
    "root/a/some/file.R", 
    "root/a/another/file.R", 
    "root/a/another/cool/file.R", 
    "root/b/some/data.csv", 
    "root/b/more/data.csv"
)


library(data.tree); library(plyr)

x <- lapply(strsplit(path, "/"), function(z) as.data.frame(t(z)))
x <- rbind.fill(x)
x$pathString <- apply(x, 1, function(x) paste(trimws(na.omit(x)), collapse="/"))
(mytree <- data.tree::as.Node(x))

1  root                  
2   ¦--a                 
3   ¦   ¦--some          
4   ¦   ¦   °--file.R    
5   ¦   °--another       
6   ¦       ¦--file.R    
7   ¦       °--cool      
8   ¦           °--file.R
9   °--b                 
10      ¦--some          
11      ¦   °--data.csv  
12      °--more          
13          °--data.csv  


plot(mytree)

You can get the parts you want (I think) but it'll require you to do the leg work and figure out conversion between data types in data.tree: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/data.tree/vignettes/data.tree.html#tree-conversion

I use this approach in my pathr package's tree function when use.data.tree = TRUE https://github.com/trinker/pathr#tree

EDIT Per@Luke's comment below...data.tree::as.Node takes a path directly:

(mytree <- data.tree::as.Node(data.frame(pathString = path)))

                levelName
1  root2                 
2   ¦--a                 
3   ¦   ¦--some          
4   ¦   ¦   °--file.R    
5   ¦   °--another       
6   ¦       ¦--file.R    
7   ¦       °--cool      
8   ¦           °--file.R
9   °--b                 
10      ¦--some          
11      ¦   °--data.csv  
12      °--more          
13          °--data.csv