[R] Error loading packages at sprintf()

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Tue Mar 3 09:50:17 CET 2009


This is a Mac-specific issue, as you are installing binary packages. 
The real error message was

> /bin/sh: line 1: tar: command not found

so the problem is that tar is not in your path.  I've no idea how that 
would come to be (all Macs I have used had /usr/bin/tar), so please 
ask on R-sig-mac.

As far as I can tell, the sprintf message also comes from Mac-specific 
code and I thnk I know how to correct that.  But the real error was 
the one about 'tar'.

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Andrew J. Rominger wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I'm running R2.8.1 on a Mac OS 10.4.11.  While trying to install the package gdata, I was presented with the following (error at end of report):
>
> R > install.packages("gdata")
> also installing the dependency ‘gtools’
>
> trying URL 'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gtools_2.5.0-1.tgz'
> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 85484 bytes (83 Kb)
> opened URL
> ==================================================
> downloaded 83 Kb
>
> trying URL 'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gdata_2.4.2.tgz'
> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 539301 bytes (526 Kb)
> opened URL
> ==================================================
> downloaded 526 Kb
>
> /bin/sh: line 1: tar: command not found
> 2009-03-02 20:42:06.081 R[357] tossing reply message sequence 3 on thread 0x1ce3ae0
> Error in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...) :
>  argument is missing, with no default
>
>
> I can't figure out why this error is occurring [the error in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...].  I've never been prompted to supply arguments to sprintf before.  Upon trying to install various other packages (e.g. 'vegan', 'ade4', 'ads'...) I get the same error message regarding sprintf.  I recently removed many old data objects from my workspace, could I have accidentally messed with sprintf?
>
> In a previous R-help post a similar error resulted while trying to install a package from source, and was corrected by specifying type="source", but I'm not really sure how to properly specify the argument 'lib' and so leave it as it's default value.  Without specifying 'lib' is it appropriate to call type="source"?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help--
> Andy Rominger
>
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-- 
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


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