R devel - Mar 2010 - R CMD install: problem quoting spaces when calling gzip?

There appears to be a quoting problem in the way R CMD install handles file
names containing spaces, more specifically, in the way the argument is passed
through to gzip.

The install.packages command

(from R)
install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz",
repos = NULL, type = "source")

expands to

system("R_LIBS='/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library'
"/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R CMD INSTALL -l
'/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library'   '/Users/foo/Projects/R\
library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'")

and gives the same error messages as the following commands from Terminal.app on
Mac OS X

(from bash)
R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz
R CMD install "~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz"
R CMD install '~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'

, namely (the error messages): 

gzip: /Users/foo/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory
gzip: library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz: No such file or directory


The following commands do work 

(from R)
setwd("~/Projects/R library/bar/")
install.packages("eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type =
"source")

(from bash)
cd ~/Projects/R\ library/bar/
R CMD install eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz

Interestingly, if the file is unpacked on the command line (tar xzvf), then both
R CMD install and install.packages work fine using the quoted path name syntax,
i.e.,

R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR
install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR", repos = NULL,
type = "source")

Is this a known problem? I searched the archives, but did not find a decisive
answer (only some rather old posts suggesting not to use path names containing
spaces--unfortunately this is not an option in the managed Windows environment I
need to work in next week).

Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time,
Jochen

----
Jochen Laubrock, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam,
Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
phone: +49-331-977-2346, fax: +49-331-977-2793

You haven't told us your version of R (nor any of the other 
information requested in the posting guide).  As far as I can see this 
works in 2.11.0 alpha.

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, jochen laubrock wrote:
> There appears to be a quoting problem in the way R CMD install handles file
names containing spaces, more specifically, in the way the argument is passed
through to gzip.
>
> The install.packages command
>
> (from R)
> install.packages("~/Projects/R
library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type =
"source")
>
> expands to
>
> system("R_LIBS='/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library'
"/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R CMD INSTALL -l
'/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library'   '/Users/foo/Projects/R\
library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'")
So that is fine.
>
> and gives the same error messages as the following commands from
Terminal.app on Mac OS X
>
> (from bash)
> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz
> R CMD install "~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz"
> R CMD install '~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'
the documented command is INSTALL.
> , namely (the error messages):
>
> gzip: /Users/foo/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory
> gzip: library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz: No such file or directory
Yes, and INSTALL is not designed to work with paths with spaces in on 
Unix-alikes.
>
> The following commands do work
>
> (from R)
> setwd("~/Projects/R library/bar/")
> install.packages("eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type =
"source")
>
> (from bash)
> cd ~/Projects/R\ library/bar/
> R CMD install eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz
>
> Interestingly, if the file is unpacked on the command line (tar xzvf), then
both R CMD install and install.packages work fine using the quoted path name
syntax, i.e.,
>
> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR
> install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR", repos =
NULL, type = "source")
>
> Is this a known problem?
It is a known restriction.
> I searched the archives, but did not find a decisive answer (only 
some rather old posts suggesting not to use path names containing
spaces--unfortunately this is not an option in the managed Windows environment I
need to work in next week).
>
> Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time,
> Jochen
>
> ----
> Jochen Laubrock, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam,
> Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
> phone: +49-331-977-2346, fax: +49-331-977-2793
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
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