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Path separator issues in OSX 10.5

3 messages · Simon Urbanek, Ben Tupper

Ben Tupper
# 
Hello,

I have a new Mac OSX 10.5 iMac running R 2.8.1.  Using Finder, I  
manually created a folder for R source code as /Users/Shared/code/R.

If I use R.app's "Misc>Change Working Directory..." menu dialog to  
navigate to /Users/Shared/code/R and then use getwd() to print the  
directory path, the components of the path are separated with colons  
as shown:  /Users/Shared/Shared:code/Shared:code:R

The R function file.path() does not produces these colon-ized paths.

I have pasted below the commands I used as well as the output of  
sessionInfo().  Additionally, I have provided the output of the ls  
command from the Terminal which also appears to use the colon-ized form.

I cannot replicate this issue in OSX 10.4.11 and R 2.8.1.  I am not  
sure how to proceed and suggestions are most welcome.

Thanks,
Ben



# file.path() creates the paths with the path separator "/"
 > ROOTDIR <- file.path("/", "Users", "Shared")
 > file.path(ROOTDIR, "code", "R")
[1] "//Users/Shared/code/R"

# but according to the dir() it is unreadable
 > dir(file.path(ROOTDIR, "code", "R"))
character(0)
Warning message:
In dir(file.path(ROOTDIR, "code", "R")) :
  list.files: '//Users/Shared/code/R' is not a readable directory


# use R.app's Misc>Change Working Directory...
# to change to "/Users/Shared/code/R"
 > getwd()
[1] "/Users/Shared/Shared:code/Shared:code:R"


 > sessionInfo()
R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
i386-apple-darwin8.11.1

locale:
en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

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


 From Terminal...
Henry:Shared Brian$ ls
SC Info                Shared:code        Shared:data        Shared:doc
Simon Urbanek
#
On Jan 21, 2009, at 13:15 , Ben Tupper wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Why should it? The colon is part of the name - the name of your  
directory is "Shared:code" so the proper use of file.path is
 > file.path("/Users","Shared","Shared:Code","Shared:code:R")
[1] "/Users/Shared/Shared:Code/Shared:code:R"

BTW: I suspect you are not quite aware of what you're doing in your  
Finder - you're creating files/directories that have a slash in their  
name which the Finder re-maps to colons. This has nothing to do with R  
- it's a historic work-around in the Finder from times when / was  
valid in file names in OS 9 and I suspect you didn't really mean to  
create those files/directories that way...

Cheers,
S

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Ben Tupper
    

    

      
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On Jan 21, 2009, at 2:47 PM, Simon Urbanek wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
Bingo!  Thanks for the explanation, Simon.  Your hunch that each  
manually created directory was created with a "/" prefix is exactly  
right. You are right that it was unintentional, and I won't even try  
to explain how that happened.

Thanks again and cheers,
Ben