This post demonstrates how to generate sequential filenames or folders, like ‘AA’, ‘AA_01’, ‘AA_02’, and beyond.

Sequential Filenames or Folders

After saving estimation results in an ‘AA’ folder, subsequent results with different configurations are stored in sequentially numbered folders such as ‘AA_01’, ‘AA_02’, and so on. Of course, this version history management also applies to files.

This method is useful to save forecasting results with varying specifications, such as different models or sample periods, for ongoing comparative analysis.

Sequential Folders

The following R code is used for creating sequential folders.

setwd('your working directory')
 
# creates sequentially numbered folders 
create_numbered_folder <- function(str_nm, digits=2) {
    
    # Create the folder only if it doesn't exist
    if (!file.exists(str_nm)) { 
        folder_name <- str_nm
    } else {
        kk <- 1
        folder_name <- sprintf("%s_%0*d", str_nm, digits, kk)
        while (file.exists(folder_name)) {
            kk <- kk + 1
            folder_name <- sprintf("%s_%0*d", str_nm, digits, kk)
        }
    }
    dir.create(folder_name)
    return(folder_name)
}
 
# Example usage:
str_nm <- "AA"
new_folder <- create_numbered_folder(str_nm)
print(paste("Created folder:", new_folder))

> 
[1] "Created folder: AA"
> 
[1] "Created folder: AA_01"
> 
[1] "Created folder: AA_02"
>

Sequential Filenames

The following R code is used for creating sequential filenames.

# creates sequentially numbered file names 
create_numbered_file_name <- function(base_name, digits = 2, 
                                      extension = ".csv") {
    # Create the folder only if it doesn't exist
    base_name_we <- sprintf("%s%s", base_name, extension)
    if (!file.exists(base_name_we)) {
        file_name <- base_name_we
    } else {
        kk <- 1
        file_name <- sprintf("%s_%0*d%s", base_name, 
                             digits, kk, extension)
        while (file.exists(file_name)) {
            kk <- kk + 1
            file_name <- sprintf("%s_%0*d%s", base_name, 
                                 digits, kk, extension)
        }
        return(file_name)
    }
}
 
# Example usage:
base_file_name <- "FF"
new_file_name  <- create_numbered_file_name(base_file_name)
print(paste("file name:", new_file_name))
 
# writing row in the csv file 
write.table(NA, file = new_file_name, sep = ",", 
            append = TRUE, quote = FALSE, 
            col.names = FALSE, row.names = FALSE) 

> 
[1] "file name: FF.csv"
> 
[1] "file name: FF_01.csv"
> 
[1] "file name: FF_02.csv"
>

Originally posted on the SHLee AI Financial Model blog.