[Rd] system()/system2() using short paths of commands on Windows?

[Yihui Xie]

The problem in TeX Live has just been fixed. Now it will expand short
names: https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2023-November/049706.html
Therefore please feel free to ignore my original request. Thank you!

Regards,
Yihui
--
https://yihui.org


On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 8:28 AM Tomas Kalibera <tomas.kalibera using gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 10/31/23 10:05, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> > On 31/10/2023 4:32 a.m., Tomas Kalibera wrote:
> >>
> >> On 10/30/23 19:07, Yihui Xie wrote:
> >>> Sure. I'm not sure if it's possible to make it easier to reproduce,
> >>> but for now the example would require installing TinyTeX (via
> >>> tinytex::install_tinytex(), which can be later uninstalled cleanly via
> >>> tinytex::uninstall_tinytex() after you finish the investigation). Then
> >>> run:
> >>>
> >>>    system2('fmtutil-sys', '--all')
> >>>    # or tinytex:::fmtutil() if fmtutil-sys.exe is not on PATH
> >>>
> >>> and TeX Live would throw an error like this:
> >>>
> >>> ...\username\AppData\Roaming\TinyTeX\bin\windows\runscript.tlu:864: no
> >>> appropriate script or program found: fmtuti~1
> >>>
> >>> The command "fmtutil-sys" is longer than 8 characters and hence
> >>> shortened to "fmtutil~1". Yes, in principle, TeX Live should work with
> >>> short path names, but it doesn't at the moment. I haven't figured out
> >>> if it was a recent breakage in TeX Live or not (I've tried to contact
> >>> TeX Live developers).
> >>>
> >>> BTW, shell('fmtutil-sys --all') works fine.
> >>
> >> I can reproduce the problem, also separately from R. It is not an R
> >> problem
> >>
> >> ./fmtutil-sys.exe --version
> >> works
> >>
> >> ./fmtuti~1 --version
> >> doesn't work
> >>
> >> The problem is in runscript.tlu, when it looks at "progname", it parses
> >> it assuming it is the full name, looking for "-sys" suffix, which won't
> >> be in the short name:
> >>
> >> progname, substcount = string.gsub(progname, '%-sys$', '')
> >> local sysprog = (substcount > 0) -- true if there was a -sys suffix
> >> removed
> >>
> >> and it does further processing using the program name.
> >>
> >> This has to be fixed on the luatex end, it must be able to work with
> >> short paths (e.g. expand it appropriately). You could probably work
> >> around the installation before it gets fixed, e.g. by creating another
> >> wrapper which would expand to long names, delete the short name, patch
> >> the script, etc. After all, if it works via a shell, then probably the
> >> shell is expanding to the long names and you have a work-around (I don't
> >> know how reliable).
> >>
> >> Adding an option to R's system*() functions to use only long names
> >> doesn't make sense.
> >
> > On the other hand, not modifying the executable name would make a lot
> > of sense, wouldn't it?  I'm pretty sure all supported versions of
> > Windows can handle long filenames.
>
> There could be an option to pass the "module" name directly, which would
> end up as the first argument of CreateProcess, so avoid the search-path
> lookup and the complete path expansion. That would make sense, but I am
> not persuaded it is needed. I don't think the luatex wrapper bug is a
> strong enough case to complicate the code and API (which is already
> rather complicated) any further. It would not be "just" a new option,
> but also dissecting the module name from the command (when not using a
> shell).
>
> While thinking about this and reading the related code I found a bug in
> handling paths with spaces when short paths are not available, fixed now.
>
> Tomas
>
> >
> > Duncan Murdoch
> >