R devel - Jan 2019 - Bug or undocumented behavior in normalizePath() with file system links on windows

Hello,

I discovered a bug or undocumented behavior in normalizePath

steps to reproduce:

execute normalizePath on a folder link on windows. When you are on a 
non-english windows box, you likely have links in place for windows' 
default folders, e.g. "C:\Programme" linking to "C:\Program
Files" on
german windows boxes.

Thus executing 'normalizePath("C:/Programme/R")' results in an
"
path[1]="C:/Programme/R": Access is denied" error while 
'normalizePath("C:/Program Files/R")' yields the expected
result. Just
executing executing 'normalizePath("C:/Programme")' however
also yields
the expected result,

Cheers
David

-- 
M.Sc. David Korfkamp

OFFIS e.V. - Institut f?r Informatik
FuE Bereich Gesundheit | R&D Division Health
Escherweg 2, 26121 Oldenburg - Germany
Phone/Fax: +49 (0) 441 9722 346 / -111
E-Mail: david.korfkamp at offis.de
URL: http://www.offis.de

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techn. Susanne Boll-Westermann, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Axel Hahn, Prof. Dr.-Ing. 
Andreas Hein, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Lehnhoff 
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I think this is caused by insufficient permissions on "C:/Programme" 
junction, and the behavior of normalizePath is as documented. I can get 
the same error with "C:/Documents and Settings", which is on my
machine
a junction into "C:/Users". The path cannot be normalized using 
normalizePath(), because my user account does not have read (listing) 
permissions for the junction "C:/Documents and Settings". This is 
documented in ?normalizePath as one of the reasons for it to signal an 
error (and, on Windows, read permissions for a directory are needed for 
conversion to long path names). Normalization works fine for both 
junctions and symbolic links with sufficient permissions (note that on 
Windows, as documented, links are not resolved; on Unix/POSIX they are, 
by realpath).

Best,
Tomas

On 1/24/19 3:51 PM, David Korfkamp wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I discovered a bug or undocumented behavior in normalizePath
>
> steps to reproduce:
>
> execute normalizePath on a folder link on windows. When you are on a
> non-english windows box, you likely have links in place for windows'
> default folders, e.g. "C:\Programme" linking to "C:\Program
Files" on
> german windows boxes.
>
> Thus executing 'normalizePath("C:/Programme/R")' results
in an "
> path[1]="C:/Programme/R": Access is denied" error while
> 'normalizePath("C:/Program Files/R")' yields the expected
result. Just
> executing executing 'normalizePath("C:/Programme")'
however also yields
> the expected result,
>
> Cheers
> David
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel


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