This is a Mac-specific issue, as you are installing binary packages.
The real error message was
> /bin/sh: line 1: tar: command not found
so the problem is that tar is not in your path. I've no idea how that
would come to be (all Macs I have used had /usr/bin/tar), so please
ask on R-sig-mac.
As far as I can tell, the sprintf message also comes from Mac-specific
code and I thnk I know how to correct that. But the real error was
the one about 'tar'.
On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Andrew J. Rominger wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm running R2.8.1 on a Mac OS 10.4.11. While trying to install the
package gdata, I was presented with the following (error at end of report):
>
> R > install.packages("gdata")
> also installing the dependency ?gtools?
>
> trying URL
'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gtools_2.5.0-1.tgz'
> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 85484 bytes (83 Kb)
> opened URL
> =================================================> downloaded 83 Kb
>
> trying URL
'http://cran.stat.ucla.edu/bin/macosx/universal/contrib/2.8/gdata_2.4.2.tgz'
> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 539301 bytes (526 Kb)
> opened URL
> =================================================> downloaded 526 Kb
>
> /bin/sh: line 1: tar: command not found
> 2009-03-02 20:42:06.081 R[357] tossing reply message sequence 3 on thread
0x1ce3ae0
> Error in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...) :
> argument is missing, with no default
>
>
> I can't figure out why this error is occurring [the error in
sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...]. I've never been prompted to
supply arguments to sprintf before. Upon trying to install various other
packages (e.g. 'vegan', 'ade4', 'ads'...) I get the same
error message regarding sprintf. I recently removed many old data objects from
my workspace, could I have accidentally messed with sprintf?
>
> In a previous R-help post a similar error resulted while trying to install
a package from source, and was corrected by specifying type="source",
but I'm not really sure how to properly specify the argument 'lib'
and so leave it as it's default value. Without specifying 'lib' is
it appropriate to call type="source"?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help--
> Andy Rominger
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
--
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