How to Fix in R: error in file(file, “rt”) : cannot open the connection

In this article, we are going to see how to fix the error in file(file, “rt”) : cannot open the connection. When error that one may face in R is:

Error in file(file, "rt") : 
cannot open the connection

In addition: Warning message:
In file(file, "rt") :
 cannot open file 'sample.csv': 
 No such file or directory

The R compiler produces such an error when one tries to read a CSV file but the file or the directory that is being accessed does not exist.

When this error might occur in R

Let’s consider that we have a CSV file: Sample and we want to read it:

R

# Try to read sample CSV file
df <- read.csv('sample.csv')

Output:

The R compiler produces this error because there is no CSV file by the name sample in the current working directory.

How to Fix the Error

To get the current working directory in which we are in, we can use the getwd() function in R:

Example:

R

# Print the current directory
getwd()

Output:

Method 1: Using setwd()

Since the sample.csv file is located in C:\Users\harsh\Desktop\GeeksforGeeks directory, hence we need to move to this directory. In R, we can move from the current working directory to any other directory using the setwd() function:

R

# Mark the current directory
setwd('C:\\Users\\harsh\\Desktop\\GeeksforGeeks')

# Read the sample.
dataframe <- read.csv('sample.csv', header=TRUE,
                      stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

# view data
dataframe

Output:

Hence, we are able to read the sample.csv file now.

Method 2: Using read.csv() 

Another way is to access the csv file by giving the complete path of the file instead of going to that directory:

Example:

R

# Read the CSV file by giving the complete file path
dataframe <- read.csv('C:\\Users\\harsh\\Desktop\\GeeksforGeeks\\sample.csv',
                      header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

# Display the dataframe
dataframe

Output: