R help - Jan 2005 - dyn.load Excel add-in on Windows XP and XLCall32.dll

I am on Win XP SP2 using R 2.0.1 patched.
I could not find anything apropos in the archives or with search engines.
(But maybe I need to be taught how to search better.)

I am trying to dyn.load some commercial DLLs (Excel add-ins),
but I get a message box saying:

"This application has failed to start because XLCall32.dll was not
found."

The message in R is:

Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) : 
        unable to load shared library "<correct path>":
  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.

The DLLs work in Excel without my system having XLCall32.dll anywhere;
(I believe it was removed from 2000 and XP for security reasons.)
So possibly there is no real dependency there? (Cygwin strings command
does find that word in the DLLs, though.)

Is there a workaround for this, do I need to write an R-compatible wrapper,
or is it just impossible?

(I was able to load other DLLs (non-Excel add-ins), just as a test.)

Thanks for any pointers!

David L. Reiner
Rho Trading
Chicago  IL  60605

Use pedump -i to find the depedencies (see README.packages).

This is a Windows issue, and you will need to seek advice on a Windows 
forum.  That message is coming (as it says) from the Windows routine
LoadLibrary.


On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 davidr at rhotrading.com wrote:
> I am on Win XP SP2 using R 2.0.1 patched.
> I could not find anything apropos in the archives or with search engines.
> (But maybe I need to be taught how to search better.)
>
> I am trying to dyn.load some commercial DLLs (Excel add-ins),
> but I get a message box saying:
>
> "This application has failed to start because XLCall32.dll was not
found."
>
> The message in R is:
>
> Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) :
>        unable to load shared library "<correct path>":
>  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.
>
> The DLLs work in Excel without my system having XLCall32.dll anywhere;
> (I believe it was removed from 2000 and XP for security reasons.)
> So possibly there is no real dependency there? (Cygwin strings command
> does find that word in the DLLs, though.)
>
> Is there a workaround for this, do I need to write an R-compatible wrapper,
> or is it just impossible?
>
> (I was able to load other DLLs (non-Excel add-ins), just as a test.)
>
> Thanks for any pointers!
>
> David L. Reiner
> Rho Trading
> Chicago? IL? 60605
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
-- 
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