[Rcpp-devel] link issue when Rcpp package is installed in a path with space

[Ken Williams]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dirk Eddelbuettel [mailto:edd at debian.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 6:46 PM
> To: Dirk Eddelbuettel
> Cc: Ken Williams; rcpp-devel at lists.r-forge.r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rcpp-devel] link issue when Rcpp package is installed in a path
> with space
>
>
> On 16 July 2012 at 17:17, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> |
> | With that, let me say that I am sorry for your troubles with Rcpp.  My
> | preference is to work on a different OS most of the time...
>
> ..., or as stated, follow the R-on-Windows FAQ, and keep R in a path without
> spaced.   And Rcpp and RInside then work swimmingly, evem on Windoze.

Strictly speaking, I *do* have R installed in a path without spaces.  It's called C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-215~1.1/ .  I just can't convince the toolchain to use that path without mucking with it.

Additionally, spaces are not the only problem, they're just the most common one.  But other characters will cause problems too, including semicolons, brackets, asterisks, parentheses, certain tildes, and so on.  Like spaces, those are all perfectly valid in file/directory names when properly quoted or escaped from the shell.  In general, when I see shell quoting problems when a script does a system call, it raises a red flag, and that shell call should be eliminated in favor of a direct exec() that doesn't invoke the shell at all and thus doesn't process metacharacters.

That's why I was advocating switching to system2(), which would get rid of all those problems in one fell swoop.  But it looks like quite a hurdle, because if I'm correct, it's something that would need to be changed in R core, is that correct?

 -Ken

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