Skip to content

unable to get "R CMD" to work as expected on a 64 bit windows machine

6 messages · Henrik Bengtsson, Joshua Wiley, Martyn Byng

#
Hi,

I've just downloaded and installed R 2.14.0 using the windows binary on
a 64bit windows machine running windows 7.

Rterm / RGui work as expected, as does

R CMD --help

and

R CMD BATCH --help

however

R CMD check --help

returns no information and I seem to be unable to check a package.

Various other options also seem to not be working as expected, i.e. 

R CMD REMOVE aa

(where aa is just a garbage name) appears to do nothing (whereas the
same command on a 32bit windows machine returns with a message that
package aa does not exist.) 

Just invoking R on the command line appears to do nothing on 64 bit
windows as opposed to starting a command line version of R (ala Rterm)
on 32 bit windows.

Any pointers as to what I've done wrong during the installation would be
appreciated.

Cheers

Martyn
R version 2.14.0 (2011-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-pc-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

________________________________________________________________________
The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd is a company registered in England
and Wales with company number 1249803. The registered office is:
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, United Kingdom.

This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. Th...{{dropped:4}}
#
Hi Martyn,

My guess is that you need to add the directory where R is located to
your Windows PATH variable.  It sounds like Windows just doesn't know
where to find R.

HTH,

Josh
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Martyn Byng <Martyn.Byng at nag.co.uk> wrote:

  
    
#
Hi Josh,

Thanks for that, which directory needs to be in the path?

There is a file called R.exe in 

C:\Program Files\R\R-2.14.0\bin
C:\Program Files\R\R-2.14.0\bin\x64
and
C:\Program Files\R\R-2.14.0\bin\i386

I currently have

C:\Program Files\R\R-2.14.0\bin\x64

in the path (which is, I'm guessing why "R CMD --help" works), do I need the others in the path as well, and if so, in what order?

Cheers

Martyn


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Wiley [mailto:jwiley.psych at gmail.com] 
Sent: 14 November 2011 16:57
To: Martyn Byng
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] unable to get "R CMD" to work as expected on a 64 bit windows machine

Hi Martyn,

My guess is that you need to add the directory where R is located to
your Windows PATH variable.  It sounds like Windows just doesn't know
where to find R.

HTH,

Josh
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Martyn Byng <Martyn.Byng at nag.co.uk> wrote:

  
    
#
See if

Rcmd check --help

works.

I've always been use that form (I'm on Win7 64-bit).

/Henrik
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Martyn Byng <Martyn.Byng at nag.co.uk> wrote:
#
Hi Martyn,

I would not expect you to need directories besides Rversion\bin\x64.
That is all I normally have in my path...perhaps because I do a
complete install?

I do not really know how or why it works, so I do not have any great
insight---just my experience.  Perhaps someone else will chime in with
more definitive advice.

Best,

Josh
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Martyn Byng <Martyn.Byng at nag.co.uk> wrote:

  
    
#
Hi,

Thanks for the help.

I have now sorted out the issue.

Somehow the text "C:\Progra~1\R\R-2.14.0\bin\x64\R" had got added to the end of an environment variable called "comspec".

Removing the extraneous text solved the problem - so the only mystery now is how I managed to paste the text into the environment variable - time to go home I think :)

Cheers

Martyn

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Wiley [mailto:jwiley.psych at gmail.com] 
Sent: 14 November 2011 18:17
To: Martyn Byng
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] unable to get "R CMD" to work as expected on a 64 bit windows machine

Hi Martyn,

I would not expect you to need directories besides Rversion\bin\x64.
That is all I normally have in my path...perhaps because I do a
complete install?

I do not really know how or why it works, so I do not have any great
insight---just my experience.  Perhaps someone else will chime in with
more definitive advice.

Best,

Josh
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Martyn Byng <Martyn.Byng at nag.co.uk> wrote: