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

[Duncan Murdoch]

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.

Duncan Murdoch