[R-SIG-Mac] Word / OS X / R

[David Winsemius]

On Sep 12, 2011, at 2:43 PM, Dennis Fisher wrote:

> R 2.13.1
> OS X. 10.6.8
> Colleagues,
>
> I just encountered an interesting Word / OS X / R interaction  
> problem.  Situation is:
> 	1.  I have an open RTF file
> 	2.  From R:
> 		a.  I delete the file (confirmed)
> 		b.  I create a new RTF file with the same name (successfully)
> 		c.  I attempt to open the new RTF file
> Word hangs (a recursive message that it can't open the file -- it  
> must be corrupt), presumably because the original file was open in  
> Word, despite being deleted from the drive.

Sounds more like a Microsoft error. File locking (or lack thereof)  
varies across OSes. BSD is more permissive than System V. It is not  
the default on BSD Unix.

>
> Any ideas on how to solve this?  Is there some method (from R or  
> from the OS) to detect which files Word has open?   If so, I could  
> avoid creating the new file if the original one was open.
> Interestingly, I presume that this would not happen in Windows  
> because step 2a could not happen if the file were open.


http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ 
ManPages/10.5/man2/flock.2.html

I suppose you need to determine by experimentation whether MS-Word  
sets any flags that system utilities can access.


> Dennis
>

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT