[R] Problem with foreign package

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 2/2/2009 8:46 AM, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:
> I tried to use write.foreign() to export to SAS this morning and got an 
> error.
> 
> When I looked at the code for writeForeignSAS() I saw this line:
> 
> dfn < -df
> 
> which I think should be
> 
> dfn <- df
> 
> So, I tried to run update.packages() to see if there was an updated 
> version and got the following result.

That bug was fixed a few weeks ago, but a new version has not been 
released yet.  You can get the latest source from svn:

https://svn.r-project.org/R-packages/trunk/foreign


> 
>  > update.packages(c("foreign"))
> Warning message:
> In list.files(lib) : list.files: 'foreign' is not a readable directory
> 
> I ran the above command as root.
> 
> Is this because the foreign package is a core package and not a CRAN one?

It is a "recommended" package, which means it is on CRAN, but is also 
included in binary distributions of R.  But the reason you got that 
error is because update.packages() doesn't take a package name as the 
first arg, the first arg is lib.loc.  You need to answer the interactive 
questions if you don't want to update everything.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> My sessionInfo() is
> 
> R version 2.8.0 (2008-10-20)
> i686-pc-linux-gnu
> 
> locale:
> LC_CTYPE=en_US;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US;LC_COLLATE=C;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_US;LC_PAPER=en_US;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_2.8.0
> 
> and my version of foreign is 0.8-30
>