Thanks to all for your help and suggestions. I apparently did somehow delete tar. In the terminal i get:
$ which tar no tar in /usr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11R6/bin Sorry to be a little slow, but I'm not familiar with working in the terminal so I'm sure there is a way to "reset" the path--but I don't know how to do it. And I don't want to mess anything up any more! Could anyone direct me as to where I can properly learn about resetting the path to include tar? Thanks very much-- Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Urbanek" <simon.urba...@r-project.org> To: "Andrew J. Rominger" <romin...@stanford.edu> Cc: r-sig-mac@stat.math.ethz.ch Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 7:31:26 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Error loading packages, command 'tar' missing from path? On Mar 3, 2009, at 17:52 , Andrew J. Rominger wrote: > Hello all, > > My appologies for any possible cross-posting--I originally posted a > version of this to R-Help, but was refered to r-sig-mac because > apparently my problem is mac-specific. > It is specific to your system - experience (see archives) shows that either you somehow changed the default PATH and it doesn't include / usr/bin anymore or you have somehow deleted tar (/usr/bin/tar). Cheers, S > 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): > >> 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 > > > It seems that 'tar' is missing which (I'm guessing) leads to an > error in sprintf(). I've never been presented with this error > before. I tried loading various other packages and received the > same error. When the error first appeared, I was running R2.5.3. > After upgrading to R2.8.1 the error persists. > > Thanks in advance for any help-- > Andy Rominger > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-Mac mailing list > R-SIG-Mac@stat.math.ethz.ch > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac -- Andrew Rominger Department of Biology Stanford University romin...@stanford.edu (650) 862-6063 _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac@stat.math.ethz.ch https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac