Possibly broken system2 env-option

You are using it wrong. It wants strings of the form "name=value", not a character vector with names as labels. So this is closer to the mark:

system2("echo", env = c("VAR='Hello World'"), args = c("$VAR"))

However, as you see it doesn't work as intended. The problem is that the $-substitution refers to the environment of the shell executing the command. I.e. this does not work from a terminal command line either:

pd$ VAR="foo" echo $VAR

pd$

Or even

pd$ VAR="bar"
pd$ VAR="foo" echo $VAR
bar

What you need is something like (NB: single quotes!)

pd$ VAR="foo" sh -c 'echo $VAR'
foo

So:

system2("sh", env = c("VAR='Hello World'"), args = c("-c 'echo $VAR'"))

Hello World

-pd

On 18 Mar 2019, at 17:28 , Henning Bredel <h.bredel at gmx.de> wrote:

Hey all,

what is wrong with this command:

 system2("echo", env = c(VAR = "Hello World"), args = c("$VAR"))

I am a bit confused, as help("system2") writes about the env option:

character vector of name=value strings to set environment variables.

Is this option buggy, or am I using it just wrong?

Thanks for your help

 Henning

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