[Rd] R CMD install: problem quoting spaces when calling gzip?

[jochen laubrock]

I am sorry, this was from 2.10.1 on Mac OS X 10.6, so it might be Mac-specific. The behavior is reproducible both from the shell and the GUI version of R (sessionInfo output below). It does not seem to depend on the particular package: it can be reproduced by downloading an archive of a package from CRAN to a path containing spaces and calling
install.packages("path/with spaces/downloadedPackage.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source"):

> print(dl <- download.packages("gam", destdir="~/Projects/R library/tmp"))
[...] downloaded 300 Kb
     [,1]  [,2]                                   
[1,] "gam" "~/Projects/R library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz"
> install.packages(dl[,2], repos = NULL, type = "source")
[...]
gzip: /Users/jochen/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory
gzip: library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz: No such file or directory
ERROR: cannot extract package from ‘/Users/jochen/Projects/R library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz’

# /usr/bin/R 
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14) 
x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0 

locale:
[1] de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8/C/C/de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

# R.app (RAqua)
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14) 
i386-apple-darwin9.8.0 

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base



On Mar 26, 2010, at 10:19 , Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> You haven't told us your version of R (nor any of the other information requested in the posting guide).  As far as I can see this works in 2.11.0 alpha.
Does that mean that it has been re-designed to work with paths containing spaces on Unix-alikes?

> 
> On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, jochen laubrock wrote:
> 
>> There appears to be a quoting problem in the way R CMD install handles file names containing spaces, more specifically, in the way the argument is passed through to gzip.
>> 
>> The install.packages command
>> 
>> (from R)
>> install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source")
>> 
>> expands to
>> 
>> system("R_LIBS='/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library' "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R CMD INSTALL -l '/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library'   '/Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'")
> 
> So that is fine.
> 
>> 
>> and gives the same error messages as the following commands from Terminal.app on Mac OS X
>> 
>> (from bash)
>> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz
>> R CMD install "~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz"
>> R CMD install '~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'
> 
> the documented command is INSTALL.
sorry
> 
>> , namely (the error messages):
>> 
>> gzip: /Users/foo/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory
>> gzip: library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz: No such file or directory
> 
> Yes, and INSTALL is not designed to work with paths with spaces in on Unix-alikes.
> 
>> 
>> The following commands do work
>> 
>> (from R)
>> setwd("~/Projects/R library/bar/")
>> install.packages("eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source")
>> 
>> (from bash)
>> cd ~/Projects/R\ library/bar/
>> R CMD install eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz
>> 
>> Interestingly, if the file is unpacked on the command line (tar xzvf), then both R CMD install and install.packages work fine using the quoted path name syntax, i.e.,
>> 
>> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR
>> install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR", repos = NULL, type = "source")
>> 
>> Is this a known problem?
> 
> It is a known restriction.
> 
>> I searched the archives, but did not find a decisive answer (only 
> some rather old posts suggesting not to use path names containing spaces--unfortunately this is not an option in the managed Windows environment I need to work in next week).
>> 
>> Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time,
>> Jochen
>> 
>> ----
>> Jochen Laubrock, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam,
>> Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
>> phone: +49-331-977-2346, fax: +49-331-977-2793
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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