R crash using Sys.which on Windows

From: "Prof Brian Ripley" <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
To: r-devel at r-project.org
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 12:40:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Rd] R crash using Sys.which on Windows

This is a change in behaviour of the Windows API function since the code
was written (years ago).  It will be changed in R 3.1.1: meanwhile you
can always use the shortPathName to abbreviate the name.


On 06/05/2014 19:28, Tobias Verbeke wrote:

Dear list,

When installing the latest version of Rtools (3.1.0.1942) into a path that
contains more than 96 characters on Windows 7 64-bit,
e.g. into

C:\TheLatestRtoolsInAPathWithMoreThanNinetySixCharactersWillCrashTheRSessionUponCallingTheSysWhichFunctionInRToGetTheGccPath

and assuming that the Rtools bin paths have been appropriately added to the
PATH environment variable as in

c:\TheLatestRtoolsInAPathWithMoreThanNinetySixCharactersWillCrashTheRSessionUponCallingTheSysWhichFunctionInRToGetTheGccPath\bin;c:\TheLatestRtoolsInAPathWithMoreThanNinetySixCharactersWillCrashTheRSessionUponCallingTheSysWhichFunctionInRToGetTheGccPath\gcc-4.6.3\bin

the following call from RGui 64-bit (version 3.1.0) reproducibly causes R
to crash:

Sys.which("ls")

Sys.which seems to use an internal function on Windows. Is this a known
issue?

Please let me know if I can provide any more relevant information.

Best,
Tobias

--
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at 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