reluctant to read win95 directory (PR#231)

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

Why was this a bug report?  It does not seem to me to meet the requirements
of a bug given in the R FAQ.

On 22 Jul 1999, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:

> John.Peters@tip.csiro.au writes:
> 
> > Using rw0642 under win95, on executing from a directory on the c: drive:
> > 
> >    system("command.com /c dir", intern=T)
> > 
> > there is a whirring from drive a: (empty), then the message appears in a 
> > dos box:
> > 
> >    General failure reading device aLP!!?
> >    Abort, Retry, Fail?
> 
> Not that I know anything about Windows, but is there a chance that the
> machine goes looking for command.com on the diskette? I.e. you want
> c:\\windows\\command.com instead.

Not on my machine: that command works for me.

What do you (John) expect this command to do? In particular, what directory
does you expect it to list?  You have not told it, and Windows has quite
complicated rules for finding the current working directory. My guess
is that those rules are giving a: in your circumstances. Put a floppy
in and find out.

Tip:  using shell() would be much simpler. Try ?shell (on Windows only).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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