[Rd] Bug in RScript.exe for 3.5.0

Tomas Kalibera
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 06:23:07 -0000

Hi Simone,

On 04/29/2018 10:12 PM, Simone Giannerini wrote:
>
>     Dear Tomas,
>
>     thank you for fixing the bug, I still do not find it mentioned in
>     the changelog though (neither R-patched nor R-devel), also, see
>     inline below
>
as Henrik pointed out, the fix is mentioned in the NEWS file (now both
R-devel and R-patched). The usual procedure is fix in R-devel, give some
time for further testing/review also by others (depends on the severity
of the bug and the risk of introducing new bugs by the fix), then update
NEWS in R-devel, then eventually port both the fix and the NEWS entry to
R-patched.
>
>
>     On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 11:36 PM, Tomas Kalibera
>     <tomas.kalibera at gmail.com <mailto:tomas.kalibera at
gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>         I don't have an opinion if this requires 3.5.1 to be released
>         soon(er), but I have ported to R-patched now. The bug existed
>         in R-devel for a year without being spotted, which is quite a
>         long time - but it may be these bugs are hard to find before
>         release, because people testing and using an unreleased
>         version of R would not use space in file names. As apparently
>         users of released versions do, we should do better about
>         testing, perhaps test regularly with space in path names on a
>         system that supports it. I think normal regression tests
>         should not depend on such support.
>
>         In either case, I would recommend users to avoid space in file
>         names to be safe.
>
>
>     note that sometimes users have little or no control over this. For
>     instance, the bug broke the RManager interface between R, knitr
>     and Winedt since Winedt installs itself and its data in
>     directories with spaces in the filename/path and RManager calls
>     are something of the kind
>
>     Rscript.exe "%b\Exec\R\Knitr.R" filename.Rnw
>
>     where %b is the local Winedt directory that by default has spaces
>     in its path. Before you suggested the workaround I had to convert
>     manually the paths to the dos 8.3 format in order to make it work
>     again.
>
Indeed, the space could also originate from path name set up by the
system administrator (such as first and last name of a user) or from a
third party application. It may be also a third party application that
is not robust against space in file name (e.g. Make, where it is by
design and essentially cannot be fixed). I think ideally in we should in
all roles (administrator, user, package developer, R internals
developer) try to avoid space in file names, try to educate people to
avoid space in file names, but also try to make systems work even with
space in file name. When you find a bug in R itself that prevents
something from working with space in filename, please file a bug report.
Especially when a bug has been introduced between R versions, it is
usually easy to fix it - of course there is no guarantee but you may
easily be given a workaround within few hours. If you find such error in
a package, please report to package author (and if repeatedly
unresponsive, please report to repository maintainer - e.g. CRAN).

Best
Tomas


>
>     Ciao,
>
>     Simone
>
>         One known problem is that some packages will not build when
>         RHOME has space in its name (on Windows, this is not a problem
>         on drives with short file names supported, but that is not
>         always the case) - CRAN is now checking the most common source
>         of this issue, but there may be more.
>
>         Tomas
>
>
>
>         On 04/28/2018 07:23 PM, Yihui Xie wrote:
>
>             It seems the fix has not been ported to the patched
>             version of R on
>             Windows yet. I just tested R version 3.5.0 Patched (2018-04-27
>             r74667).
>
>             IMHO this bug is so bad that it is worth a new release R
>             3.5.1 before
>             it starts biting more users like this one
>             https://stackoverflow.com/q/50077412/559676. BTW, although
>             the bug has
>             been fixed
>             (https://github.com/wch/r-source/commit/c29f694), I think
>             it will be even better if a corresponding test is added at
>             the same
>             time to prevent this from happening again in the future.
>
>             Thanks!
>
>             Yihui
>
>             On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 7:03 AM, Kerry Jackson
>             <Kerry.Jackson at ipsos.com <mailto:Kerry.Jackson at
ipsos.com>>
>             wrote:
>
>                 Thanks Tomas,
>
>                 I confirm the R Under development (unstable)
>                 (2018-04-26 r74651) version works for Rscript when the
>                 file name has a space, and no arguments are specified.
>
>                 C:\>"C:\Program
Files\R\R-devel\bin\x64\Rscript.exe"
>                 "C:\foo bar.R"
>                 R Under development (unstable) (2018-04-26 r74651)
>                 Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
>                 Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
>
>                 Matrix products: default
>
>                 locale:
>                 [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
>                 [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
>                 [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
>                 [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
>                 [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>
>                 attached base packages:
>                 [1] stats? ? ?graphics? grDevices utils ?datasets?
>                 methods? ?base
>
>                 loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>                 [1] compiler_3.6.0
>
>                 C:\>
>
>                 -----Original Message-----
>                 From: Tomas Kalibera [mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com
>                 <mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com>]
>                 Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 10:22 AM
>                 To: Kerry Jackson <Kerry.Jackson at Ipsos.com>
>                 Cc: r-devel at r-project.org <mailto:r-devel at
r-project.org>
>                 Subject: Re: [Rd] Bug in RScript.exe for 3.5.0
>
>                 Thanks, actually this is because the snapshot build is
>                 still one version behind (74642, the fix is in 74643).
>                 When I build my own installer and install it seems to
>                 be working fine. Sorry for the confusion,
>
>                 Tomas
>
>                 On 04/26/2018 02:49 PM, Kerry Jackson wrote:
>
>                     Hi Tomas,
>
>                     Thanks for the info about the binary builds; I did
>                     install it, however the bug still seems to be
>                     there in the current build.? The workaround you
>                     suggested does work:
>
>                     C:\>"C:\Program
>                     Files\R\R-devel\bin\x64\Rscript.exe" "C:\foo
bar.R"
>                     Fatal error: cannot open file 'C:\foo': No such
>                     file or directory
>
>
>                     C:\>"C:\Program
>                     Files\R\R-devel\bin\x64\Rscript.exe" --vanilla
>                     "C:\foo bar.R"
>                     What do you get when you multiply 6 * 9?
>                     C:\>
>
>                     -----Original Message-----
>                     From: Tomas Kalibera
>                     [mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com
>                     <mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com>]
>                     Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 8:35 AM
>                     To: Kerry Jackson <Kerry.Jackson at Ipsos.com>;
>                     r-devel at r-project.org <mailto:r-devel at
r-project.org>
>                     Subject: Re: [Rd] Bug in RScript.exe for 3.5.0
>
>                     On 04/26/2018 02:23 PM, Kerry Jackson wrote:
>
>                         Thanks Tomas.
>
>                         I confirm the quick workaround works for me in
>                         the DOS prompt, and when having a shortcut to
>                         RScript in SendTo, and when used in the Task
>                         Scheduler.? I have not tested the R-devel
>                         version, due to my unfamiliarity with
>                         installing from source code.
>
>                     Thanks, Kerry.
>
>                     There are binary builds for daily snapshots of R-devel
>                     (development/unstable version of R) at
>                     https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/rdevel.html
>
>                     At this time the build should already have the fix.
>
>                     Best
>                     Tomas
>
>                         -----Original Message-----
>                         From: Tomas Kalibera
>                         [mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com
>                         <mailto:tomas.kalibera at gmail.com>]
>                         Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:34 AM
>                         To: Kerry Jackson <Kerry.Jackson at
Ipsos.com>;
>                         r-devel at r-project.org
>                         <mailto:r-devel at r-project.org>
>                         Subject: Re: [Rd] Bug in RScript.exe for 3.5.0
>
>                         Fixed in R-devel. I will port to R-patched
>                         after more testing.
>                         Tomas
>
>                         On 04/26/2018 01:52 AM, Tomas Kalibera wrote:
>
>                             Thanks for the report. A quick workaround
>                             before this gets fixed is
>                             to add an extra first argument that has no
>                             space in it, e.g.
>
>                             Rscript --vanilla "foo bar.R"
>
>                             The problem exists on all systems, not
>                             just Windows.
>
>                             Best
>                             Tomas
>
>                             On 04/25/2018 09:55 PM, Kerry Jackson wrote:
>
>                                 Hi R Developers,
>                                 I have found what I think is a bug in
>                                 the RScript.exe in version
>                                 3.5.0 of R for Windows.
>                                 When I call Rscript.exe for Version
>                                 3.5 of R, it is unable to open
>                                 the file if the file name or path has
>                                 a space in it.
>                                 As an example of what happens, I saved
>                                 2 files with the code:
>                                 cat("What do you get when you multiply
>                                 6 * 9?") as C:\foo bar.R and
>                                 as C:\foo_bar.R When I in a DOS
>                                 command window try to run these
>                                 using version 3.4.3 and 3.5:
>                                 C:\>"C:\Program
>                                 Files\R\R-3.4.3\bin\x64\Rscript.exe"
>                                 "C:\foo bar.R"
>                                 What do you get when you multiply 6 * 9?
>                                 C:\>"C:\Program
>                                 Files\R\R-3.4.3\bin\x64\Rscript.exe"
>                                 "C:\foo_bar.R"
>                                 What do you get when you multiply 6 * 9?
>                                 C:\>"C:\Program
>                                 Files\R\R-3.5.0\bin\x64\Rscript.exe"
>                                 "C:\foo bar.R"
>                                 Fatal error: cannot open file
>                                 'C:\foo': No such file or directory
>
>
>                                 C:\>"C:\Program
>                                 Files\R\R-3.5.0\bin\x64\Rscript.exe"
>                                 "C:\foo_bar.R"
>                                 What do you get when you multiply 6 * 9?
>                                 C:\>
>                                 When I try to run the file with a
>                                 space in the name in version
>                                 3.5.0 of R, there is a fatal error
>                                 saying there is no such file.
>
>
>                                 Kerry Jackson
>                                 Job title: Senior Account Manager,
>                                 Ipsos Connect US RA Testing GMU
>                                 Phone: (203) 840-3443
>
>
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>
>
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>
>     --
>     _________________________________________________________________
>
>     PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A
>     Theme issue ?DNA as information
>     <http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/dna-information>?
>     edited by Julyan H.E. Cartwright, Simone Giannerini and Diego L.
>     Gonz?lez
>     _________________________________________________________________
>
>     Simone Giannerini
>     Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche "Paolo Fortunati"
>     Universita' di Bologna
>     Via delle belle arti 41 - 40126 Bologna,? ITALY
>     Tel: +39 051 2098262? Fax: +39 051 232153
>     http://www2.stat.unibo.it/giannerini/
>     ______________________________________________________
>


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