a minor bug in rgdal?

Dear Prof. Bivand,

I am running R-2.15.2 with rgdal version 0.7-22.
I noticed the following bug: when transforming a SpatialPoints object,
a white space is prepended to the proj4string of the target CRS. For example:

crds <- matrix(data=c(9.05, 48.52), ncol=2)
spPoint <- SpatialPoints(coords=crds,
proj4string=CRS("+proj=longlat +ellps=sphere +no_defs"))
a <- spTransform(spPoint, CRS(paste("+proj=ob_tran +o_proj=longlat",
"+o_lon_p=-162 +o_lat_p=39.25 +lon_0=180 +ellps=sphere +no_defs")),
use_ob_tran=TRUE)

proj4string(a)
# " +proj=ob_tran +o_proj=longlat +o_lon_p=-162 +o_lat_p=39.25 +lon_0=180 
+ellps=sphere +no_defs"

As You can see, a white space is prepended to the proj4string, from 
"+proj=ob_tran ..."
it becomes " +proj=ob_tran ...". This leads to errors when one interpolates 
using krige from gstat for example.

Best regards,

On Sat, 8 Dec 2012, epaiv01 wrote:

Dear Prof. Bivand,

I am running R-2.15.2 with rgdal version 0.7-22.
I noticed the following bug: when transforming a SpatialPoints object,
a white space is prepended to the proj4string of the target CRS. For 
example:

Thanks for a helpful example. The problem has been around for a long 
time, and is basically caused by pj_get_def() in PROJ.4, which 
prepends a space. This function is called in various places in rgdal, 
and in addition, when the sp constructor method for CRS objects is 
called when rgdal is loaded, it is called then too; it checks the 
string for formal errors. Probably a forthcoming release of sp would 
have permitted this to be resolved at the R level, but in order to 
sort things out for earlier sp versions, I've added a trap in the C 
code in rgdal. I've committed the fix to R-forge SVN revision 402.

Please let me know if this helps,

Roger

crds <- matrix(data=c(9.05, 48.52), ncol=2)
spPoint <- SpatialPoints(coords=crds,
proj4string=CRS("+proj=longlat +ellps=sphere +no_defs"))
a <- spTransform(spPoint, CRS(paste("+proj=ob_tran +o_proj=longlat",
"+o_lon_p=-162 +o_lat_p=39.25 +lon_0=180 +ellps=sphere +no_defs")),
use_ob_tran=TRUE)

proj4string(a)
# " +proj=ob_tran +o_proj=longlat +o_lon_p=-162 +o_lat_p=39.25 
+lon_0=180 +ellps=sphere +no_defs"

As You can see, a white space is prepended to the proj4string, from 
"+proj=ob_tran ..."
it becomes " +proj=ob_tran ...". This leads to errors when one 
interpolates using krige from gstat for example.

Best regards,