[R] problem with download.packages

[David Parkhurst]

R Version 1.7.0, under windows XP pro

The help page for update.packages says that {
`download.packages' takes a list of package names and a
destination directory, downloads the newest versions of the
package sources and saves them in `destdir'.  If the list of
available packages is not given as argument, it is also directly
obtained from CRAN.  If CRAN is local, i.e., the URL starts with
`"file:"', then the packages are not downloaded but used directly.
}.

I tried this (while connected to the internet):
> download.packages(destdir="\\aq\\R\\updates")
with this result:
trying URL `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/1.7/PACKAGES'
Content type `text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1' length 12447 bytes
opened URL
downloaded 12Kb

Error in unique(pkgs) : Argument "pkgs" is missing, with no default

Is there not an inconsistency here?  How can I get this to work?

Thanks.

Dave Parkhurst