R – Get Operating System of Computer Programmatically

Platform specific variables can be accessed in R programming language using .Platform.

.Platform returns a list with details of platform under which R was built.

To access the name of Operating System of this computer, access the OS.type component of .Platform list.

The syntax to access OS.type of .Platform is:

</>
Copy
 .Platform$OS.type

Example – Get Operating System

In the following example, we shall print the Operating System of this computer.

</>
Copy
> print (.Platform$OS.type)
[1] "windows"

Possible Values of .Platform$OS.type

There are two possible values for .Platform$OS.type. They are:

  • windows
  • unix

Uses of knowing Operating System programmatically

If the developer knows which Operating System the program is running programmatically, operating system specific R code can be written.

Conclusion

In this R Tutorial, we learned how to find Operating System of the computer programmatically.