[Rd] filenames with special characters in the R/ directory of a package?

[blue sky]

It is strange to me why the filename must start with a letter or
digit, while the following characters can be something like '['. Is
there a reason why it is designed in this way? So that I can
understand the design principle rather than memorizing the facts
derived from the principle.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 5:10 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> 'Writing R Extensions' does say what names are allowed in the R directory
> (at the start of section 1.1.3 in section-numbered formats). To wit
>
>  The R subdirectory contains R code files, only. The code files to be
>  installed must start with an ASCII (lower or upper case) letter or
>  digit and have one of the extensions .R, .S, .q, .r, or .s.
>
> '[.set.R' does not meet that rule, and so is skipped.  This is not something
> R CMD check reports, since the wording implies that other names can be used
> for files to be not installed.
>
>
> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 5:35 AM, blue sky <bluesky315 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> According to R-exts.pdf (page 3):
>>> For maximal portability filenames should only
>>> contain only ASCII characters not excluded already (that is
>>> A-Za-z0-9._!#$%&+,;=@^(){}’[]
>>>
>>> I have some files with special characters like '[' and '%' e.g.
>>> '[.set.R'.
>>
>> That character list in your extract from R-exts.pdf is a list of
>> non-special characters. And [ and % are in there.
>>
>> It's clarification of three sentences previous, which says:
>>
>> "the characters ‘"’, ‘*’, ‘:’, ‘/’, ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘?’, ‘\’, and ‘|’ are
>> not allowed in file names"
>>
>>> I also have some functions that also have those special
>>> characters defined in those files exported in NAMESPACE.
>>>
>>> I use the following command to install. And I get no warning or errors.
>>>
>>> R CMD INSTALL -d -l my_custom_dir my.pkg
>>>
>>> I then load the package. I get the following errors and warnings. I
>>> changed a file to one without these special characters. Then the
>>> corresponding warning/error disappears. Is it the case that there
>>> should never be files with special characters as names?
>>>
>>>> library(my.pkg)
>>>
>>> Error in namespaceExport(ns, exports) :
>>>  undefined exports: %is%
>>> In addition: Warning message:
>>> S3 methods ‘[.set’ were declared in NAMESPACE but not found
>>> Error: package/namespace load failed for 'my.pkg'
>>
>> Have you done an R CMD check on your package? I suspect a problem in
>> your NAMESPACE file, but it's not related to "special characters".
>>
>> Barry
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at 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 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595