R help - Apr 2005 - postscript() filenames with forward slashes cause abort

My newly installed R-2.1.0 apparently doesn't like forward slashes in
filenames:
> R.version.string
[1] "R version 2.1.0, 2005-04-18"
> plotfile <- "\home\mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> postscript(plotfile)
> plotfile <- "/home/mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> postscript(plotfile)
*** glibc detected *** double free or corruption (!prev): 0x098e7180 ***
Abort

Does this have something to do with UTF-8 (about which I know little)?

Scott Waichler
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
scott.waichler at pnl.gov

"Waichler, Scott R" <Scott.Waichler at pnl.gov> writes:
> My newly installed R-2.1.0 apparently doesn't like forward slashes in
> filenames:
> 
> > R.version.string
> [1] "R version 2.1.0, 2005-04-18"
> > plotfile <- "\home\mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> > postscript(plotfile)
> > plotfile <- "/home/mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> > postscript(plotfile)
> *** glibc detected *** double free or corruption (!prev): 0x098e7180 ***
> Abort
> 
> Does this have something to do with UTF-8 (about which I know little)?
I would conjecture that it has to do with the fact that you do not have
write permission in /home!  The backslashed version just creates
homemean_monthly_stl.eps in the current directory. If you substitute
/tmp for /home, the problem goes away (provided you're on some kind of
Unix/Linux -- you didn't say). It's still a bug of course.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907

> > My newly installed R-2.1.0 apparently doesn't like forward 
> slashes in
> > filenames:
> > 
> > > R.version.string
> > [1] "R version 2.1.0, 2005-04-18"
> > > plotfile <- "\home\mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> > > postscript(plotfile)
> > > plotfile <- "/home/mean_monthly_stl.eps"
> > > postscript(plotfile)
> > *** glibc detected *** double free or corruption (!prev): 
> 0x098e7180 
> > *** Abort
> > 
> 
> I would conjecture that it has to do with the fact that you 
> do not have write permission in /home!  The backslashed 
> version just creates homemean_monthly_stl.eps in the current 
> directory. If you substitute /tmp for /home, the problem goes 
> away (provided you're on some kind of Unix/Linux -- you 
> didn't say). It's still a bug of course.
Yes, that was it.  When I first came across the problem, I had a typo in
my longish pathname.  For the post to R Help I wanted to simplify the
problem as much as possible, and as luck would have it, I picked a
shorter pathname that was not writeable by me.

Thanks,
Scott