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
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--
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-help@r-project.org mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
