Hi all, I ran into this exact issue yesterday during the exam of statistical computing. Users can install packages in a user library that R tries to create automatically on the network drive of the student. But that doesn't happen as the unc path is not read correctly, leading to R attempting to create a local directory and being told it has no right to do so.
That is an older version of R though (3.3), but I'm wondering whether I would ask our IT department to just update R on all these computers to the latest version, or if we have to look for another solution. Cheers Joris On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 1:43 PM, Thompson, Pete <pete.thomp...@iqvia.com> wrote: > Hi, I’d like to ask about bug 17159: > > https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17159 > > I can confirm that I see exactly this bug when using dir.create on paths > of UNC form (\\server\share\xxx), with the recursive flag set. I’m seeing > this when attempting to use install.packages with such a path (which I know > isn’t supported, but would be great if it was!). I can see that a patch has > been suggested for the problem and from looking at the source code I > believe it’s a correct fix. Is there a possibility of getting this patch > included? > > The existing logic for Windows recursive dir.create (platform.c lines > 2209-22203) appears to be: > - Skip over any \\share at the start of the directory name > - Loop while there are pieces of directory name left (i.e. we haven’t hit > the last \ character) > = Find the next portion of the directory name (up to the next \ > character) > = Attempt to create the directory (unless it is of the form x: - i.e. a > drive name) > = Ignore any ‘already exists’ errors, otherwise throw an error > > This logic appears flawed in that it skips \\share which isn’t a valid > path format (according to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- > us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx ). Dredging my memory, > it’s possible that \\share was a supported format in very old versions of > Windows, but it’s been a long time since the UNC format came in. It’s also > possible that \\share is a valid format in some odd environments, but the > UNC format is far more widely used. > > The patch suggested by Evan Cortens is simply to change the skip logic to > skip over \\server\share instead of \\share. This will certainly fix the > common use case of using UNC paths, but doesn’t attempt to deal with all > the more complex options in Microsoft’s documentation. I doubt many users > would ask for the complex cases, but the basic UNC format would be of wide > applicability. > > Thanks > Pete Thompson > Director, Information Technology > Head of Spotfire Centre of Excellence > IQVIA > > > > > ________________________________________ > IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ: This electronic message, including its > attachments, is CONFIDENTIAL and may contain PROPRIETARY or LEGALLY > PRIVILEGED or PROTECTED information and is intended for the authorized > recipient of the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, you are > hereby notified that any use, disclosure, copying, or distribution of this > message or any of the information included in it is unauthorized and > strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please > immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and permanently delete this > message and its attachments, along with any copies thereof, from all > locations received (e.g., computer, mobile device, etc.). Thank you. > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -- Joris Meys Statistical consultant Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling Ghent University Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium) <https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g> ----------- Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018 http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/ ------------------------------- Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel