8 minute read

I work on lots of projects at a time, and have adopted a few organizational techniques that help me stay focused, not lose my place, and write well-documented code. Below I write about a few practices of these practices.

Organize your Directory Intentionally.

Let’s say you have a working directory called my_project with 3 folders and a README.md file:

data: data files that you bring into your workspace
R: where all of your R files live
output: modeled results, .rds files, figures that you generate
README.md: description of the project to be displayed on Github
repo_log.md: log of your activity in the repository

This layout is nice because when you commit to git, you can commit everything in the R folder easily (plus the README and repo_log), and leave out all the large data and output.

Take Advantage of Default Ordering.

Let’s say you start your analysis with a script in the R folder. I like to organize my scripts with a double-digit numeric prefix followed by an unambiguous description of its purpose, so the scripts fall into order by default, and it’s clear what the script does. For instance:

00_load_raw_data_and_clean.R
01_eda_and_summary_stats.R
02_fit_logistic_regression.R
etc…

Double digits prefixes are nice because they preserve default ordering when you make it past 10 scripts. If you think you’ll need 100 or more R scripts… we can only pray for your soul.

Use Snake Case.

I like to name variables and files using snake_case instead of CamelCase because i_find_snake_case_much_easier_to_read than CamelCaseWhichIsTooBunchedUpToRead. I also avoid.using.periods.as.delimiters in variable and file names because the period is a common argument in languages like Python [ex: pd.array()]. Using periods in names might also confuse other programmers who are used to seeing it as an argument, and it sets you up with bad habits if you start writing in one of these languages where the periods is an argument.

Never use `setwd()`. Instead, cleverly manage your file paths.

There are all sorts of ways to organize file paths, including using here() and augmenting your .RProfile file to auto-detect your working directory. This page is a great read on the topic. I used to use here(), but have since moved away from it, since it creates loads of temporary files that interfere with my git workflow.

Instead, what I do now is start my scripts with a list that stores a character string for each commonly used path in my working directory (a trick my friend Ben showed me).

# working directory
wd <- list()

# commonly used paths in my working directory
wd$data   <- "C:/Users/richpauloo/Documents/Github/my_project/data/"
wd$output <- "C:/Users/richpauloo/Documents/Github/my_project/output/"

I access each list element with the $ operator.

wd$data

## [1] "C:/Users/richpauloo/Documents/Github/my_project/data/"

wd$output

## [1] "C:/Users/richpauloo/Documents/Github/my_project/output/"

How would we use this? For example, let’s say we want to bring in the file survey_results.csv in the data folder, make a plot, and then export that plot to the output folder.

# read in survey results
sr <- read_csv(paste0(wd$data, "survey_results.csv"))

# make a plot
p <- ggplot(sr, aes(age, height)) + geom_point()

# save plot to output
ggsave(p, filename = paste0(wd$output, "plot_1.png"))

Notice that we use paste0(), which concatenates the two character strings without a separator. Since we ended our file paths in wd with a / earlier, this works beautifully. Alternatively, you could not end your file paths with /, and use paste(sep = "/"), but that’s more typing every time you want to reference a file path.

I should mention that this approach works very well for me personally, but it’s not portable code that I can send to a collaborator without them doing any work. Anyone else opening these files on another computer or cloning them from Github will need to change file paths to make the code run. This is where here(), and to a greater extent, Docker, excel. For my independent research and side projects though, the approach I outlined above works perfectly for me.

How to keep your R projects organized

Organize your Directory Intentionally.

Take Advantage of Default Ordering.

Use Snake Case.

Never use `setwd()`. Instead, cleverly manage your file paths.

More Reading

Organize your Directory Intentionally.

Take Advantage of Default Ordering.

Use Snake Case.

Never use setwd(). Instead, cleverly manage your file paths.

More Reading

Never use `setwd()`. Instead, cleverly manage your file paths.