[R] error loading tcltk2

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 20/04/2012 8:41 AM, Roberto Ugoccioni wrote:
> Hello,
> I just installed R-2.15.0 on windows XP and cannot load package tcltk2
> (which I just downloaded from CRAN as tcltk2_1.2-1.zip; package install
> reported no problems):
>
> >  library(tcltk2)
> Carico il pacchetto richiesto: tcltk
> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
> Error : .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'tcltk2', details:
>    call: system("cat /etc/issue", intern = TRUE, ignore.stderr = TRUE)
>    error: 'cat' not found
> Errore: package/namespace load failed for ‘tcltk2’
> It seems .onLoad is trying to run a unix command 'cat' but i'm on a windows
> platform:
> >  str(.Platform)
> List of 8
>   $ OS.type   : chr "windows"
>   $ file.sep  : chr "/"
>   $ dynlib.ext: chr ".dll"
>   $ GUI       : chr "Rgui"
>   $ endian    : chr "little"
>   $ pkgType   : chr "win.binary"
>   $ path.sep  : chr ";"
>   $ r_arch    : chr "i386"
> >  sessionInfo()
> R version 2.15.0 (2012-03-30)
> Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=Italian_Italy.1252  LC_CTYPE=Italian_Italy.1252
> [3] LC_MONETARY=Italian_Italy.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=Italian_Italy.1252
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> I looked for an R file in the tcltk2 installed package tree containing the
> above system() call but could not find it.
> This looks like a bug to me but I'd like to ask for further advice before
> reporting it as such, I might have overlooked something. Thanks for any
> help.

I'd suggest you should contact the package maintainer. It's not hard to 
find a copy of the cat utility function (e.g. in the Rtools used for 
building R and packages), but the error does suggest the package may not 
be intended to be used on Windows.

Duncan Murdoch