I am sorry, this was from 2.10.1 on Mac OS X 10.6, so it might be Mac-specific. The behavior is reproducible both from the shell and the GUI version of R (sessionInfo output below). It does not seem to depend on the particular package: it can be reproduced by downloading an archive of a package from CRAN to a path containing spaces and calling install.packages("path/with spaces/downloadedPackage.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source"):
> print(dl <- download.packages("gam", destdir="~/Projects/R library/tmp")) [...] downloaded 300 Kb [,1] [,2] [1,] "gam" "~/Projects/R library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz" > install.packages(dl[,2], repos = NULL, type = "source") [...] gzip: /Users/jochen/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory gzip: library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz: No such file or directory ERROR: cannot extract package from ‘/Users/jochen/Projects/R library/tmp/gam_1.01.tgz’ # /usr/bin/R > sessionInfo() R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14) x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0 locale: [1] de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8/C/C/de_DE.UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base # R.app (RAqua) > sessionInfo() R version 2.10.1 (2009-12-14) i386-apple-darwin9.8.0 locale: [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base On Mar 26, 2010, at 10:19 , Prof Brian Ripley wrote: > You haven't told us your version of R (nor any of the other information > requested in the posting guide). As far as I can see this works in 2.11.0 > alpha. Does that mean that it has been re-designed to work with paths containing spaces on Unix-alikes? > > On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, jochen laubrock wrote: > >> There appears to be a quoting problem in the way R CMD install handles file >> names containing spaces, more specifically, in the way the argument is >> passed through to gzip. >> >> The install.packages command >> >> (from R) >> install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = >> NULL, type = "source") >> >> expands to >> >> system("R_LIBS='/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library' >> "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R CMD INSTALL -l >> '/Users/foo/Library/R/2.10/library' '/Users/foo/Projects/R\ >> library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz'") > > So that is fine. > >> >> and gives the same error messages as the following commands from >> Terminal.app on Mac OS X >> >> (from bash) >> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz >> R CMD install "~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz" >> R CMD install '~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz' > > the documented command is INSTALL. sorry > >> , namely (the error messages): >> >> gzip: /Users/foo/Projects/R.gz: No such file or directory >> gzip: library/bar/eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz: No such file or directory > > Yes, and INSTALL is not designed to work with paths with spaces in on > Unix-alikes. > >> >> The following commands do work >> >> (from R) >> setwd("~/Projects/R library/bar/") >> install.packages("eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz", repos = NULL, type = "source") >> >> (from bash) >> cd ~/Projects/R\ library/bar/ >> R CMD install eyetrackR_0.13.tar.gz >> >> Interestingly, if the file is unpacked on the command line (tar xzvf), then >> both R CMD install and install.packages work fine using the quoted path name >> syntax, i.e., >> >> R CMD install /Users/foo/Projects/R\ library/bar/eyetrackR >> install.packages("~/Projects/R library/bar/eyetrackR", repos = NULL, type = >> "source") >> >> Is this a known problem? > > It is a known restriction. > >> I searched the archives, but did not find a decisive answer (only > some rather old posts suggesting not to use path names containing > spaces--unfortunately this is not an option in the managed Windows > environment I need to work in next week). >> >> Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time, >> Jochen >> >> ---- >> Jochen Laubrock, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam, >> Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany >> phone: +49-331-977-2346, fax: +49-331-977-2793 >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > > -- > Brian D. Ripley, rip...@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 ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel