Rdconv.pm errors while installing R

Thanks to Brian Ripley for the quick response to my perl problem with
Rdconv.pm.  I took the easy way out for now and added the ampersand
prefix to the txt_header subroutine call and remade R and the
recommended packages without any errors or warnings.

The original problem description and Brian's response follow:


Prof Brian Ripley writes:

> 
 > > I have just compiled and installed R-patched on a Sparc 20 running
 > > Solaris 2.5.1.  The compilation and installation went fine except for
 > > the message:
 > >
 > > Bare word found where operator expected at
 > > /usr/src/R/R-patched/share/perl/R/Rdconv.pm line 1491, near "$txtout
 > > txt_header"   (Missing operator before txt_header?)
 > >
 > > I get similar messages for lines 1390, 1405, 1420, and 1448 in
 > > Rdconv.pm.  I have Perl 5, but it's old (5.003) and maybe that's the
 > > problem.
 > >
 > > I get the same message when installing packages when their docs are
 > > processed.  My question is whether anything is likely to be wrong with
 > > the documentation produced this way.  As I run R and read the html
 > > help pages, I don't see any obvious problem.
 > >
 > > Have others had this problem?
 > 
 > Yes, they have.  It seems to be a bug in that version of perl. Try
 > making it &txt_header in those lines, until you time to get Perl upgraded.
 > 
 > As I don't have the ancient verion of perl, I can't say if the docs are
 > incorretlye processed, but it seems likely that they are.
 > 
 > -- 
 > 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 272860 (secr)
 > Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
 > 
 > 
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