R devel - Mar 2005 - Error on Windows installing package to non-default library

Hi all,

I'm seeing an error on Windows when I try to install a package to a 
package library path that starts with a digit.  I can reproduce the 
error as follows using R-devel from Feb 24 on Windows advanced server:

badLib = "c:\\badExample\\2\\foo"
dir.create(badLib, recursive=TRUE)
z = .libPaths()
z = .libPaths(c(badLib, z))
z
[1] "c:\\badExample\\2\\foo"        
"C:/falcon/sw/rw2010dev/library"

pkg = "c:\\falcon\\abind_1.1-0.zip"
install.packages(pkg, repos=NULL, lib=badLib)
package 'abind' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
updating HTML package descriptions
Error in gsub("^URL: ../../../library", lib0, readLines(cfile)) :
         invalid backreference 2 in regular expression

After looking at src/library/utils/R/windows/linkhtml.R, it seems the 
error is that the "\\2" part of the path is interpreted by gsub as a 
back reference.

Changing "\\" to "/" in the library path fixes this issue:

 > okLib = chartr("\\", "/", badLib)
 > z = .libPaths(okLib)
 > z
[1] "c:/badExample/2/foo"           
"C:/falcon/sw/rw2010dev/library"
 > install.packages(pkg, repos=NULL, lib=okLib)
package 'abind' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
updating HTML package descriptions

So adding a call to chartr inside make.search.html would seem to be an
improvement (i.e, it looks good from here, but I haven't tested and
don't know if there are reasons why this would be a bad idea).  OTOH,
maybe this should have already happened in the call to .libPaths()?

This came up because on the Windows server I'm using, tempdir() 
contains a directory names "2" as part of the path --- and I want to
be
able to install package to temporary package libraries for testing 
purposes.

+ seth

You can't please everyone all the time, and in this case you cannot just 
make the substitution as

1) some parts of Windows demand \
2) \ is a trail byte in some Japanese characters.

Why don't you just ensure that you don't use such paths for .libPaths()?

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Seth Falcon wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm seeing an error on Windows when I try to install a package to a
package
> library path that starts with a digit.  I can reproduce the error as
follows
> using R-devel from Feb 24 on Windows advanced server:
>
> badLib = "c:\\badExample\\2\\foo"
> dir.create(badLib, recursive=TRUE)
> z = .libPaths()
> z = .libPaths(c(badLib, z))
> z
> [1] "c:\\badExample\\2\\foo"        
"C:/falcon/sw/rw2010dev/library"
>
> pkg = "c:\\falcon\\abind_1.1-0.zip"
> install.packages(pkg, repos=NULL, lib=badLib)
> package 'abind' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
> updating HTML package descriptions
> Error in gsub("^URL: ../../../library", lib0, readLines(cfile)) :
>        invalid backreference 2 in regular expression
>
> After looking at src/library/utils/R/windows/linkhtml.R, it seems the error
> is that the "\\2" part of the path is interpreted by gsub as a
back
> reference.
>
> Changing "\\" to "/" in the library path fixes this
issue:
>
>> okLib = chartr("\\", "/", badLib)
>> z = .libPaths(okLib)
>> z
> [1] "c:/badExample/2/foo"           
"C:/falcon/sw/rw2010dev/library"
>> install.packages(pkg, repos=NULL, lib=okLib)
> package 'abind' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
> updating HTML package descriptions
>
> So adding a call to chartr inside make.search.html would seem to be an
> improvement (i.e, it looks good from here, but I haven't tested and
> don't know if there are reasons why this would be a bad idea).  OTOH,
> maybe this should have already happened in the call to .libPaths()?
>
> This came up because on the Windows server I'm using, tempdir()
contains a
> directory names "2" as part of the path --- and I want to be able
to install
> package to temporary package libraries for testing purposes.
>
> + seth
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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