| CHANGES | R Documentation |
system() and system2() with output redirected
to a character vector now give a warning if the command returns a
non-zero error code. (This is what a Unix-alike does as from R
2.12.0.)
system() and system2() no longer discard
output from the command to stdout and stderr as often as they used
to, and more cases of system2() are implemented.
stdout is now flushed after echoing the input line.
tar() (package
utils) is now supported on Windows.
It is now built using WiX 3.x rather than WiX
2.0. (As a result it is about 25% smaller.)
dyn.load() could be
masked in Rgui on Windows 7, as that OS can return
messages containing carriage returns and Rgui does not
support overwriting.
Sweave().
system(intern = TRUE) captured
‘stderr’ on Rterm when it was documented to only do
so on Rgui.
Rgui in R 2.12.0 (only) did not always handle lines
containing carriage returns (\r) correctly: sometimes
random characters where shown.
Since carriage returns have been supported in Rgui,
the cursor positioning after outputting a line containing a
carriage return had been unreliable.
Architecture-specific files (such as ‘Rgui.exe’ and ‘Rscript.exe’) are now in ‘R_HOME/bin/i386’ or ‘R_HOME/bin/x64’.
Because many people expect it, there is an executable ‘R_HOME/bin/R.exe’, which accepts --arch and launches either ‘R_HOME/bin/i386/R.exe’ or ‘R_HOME/bin/x64/R.exe’, and analogously for ‘Rscript.exe’. If not specified by their argument --arch, these check the environment variable R_ARCH for the architecture to use.
Rgui console now has an optional blinking
caret (cursor) to assist screen readers for the visually
impaired.
normalizePath() now signals a warning instead of an
error when the input path does not exist. It attempts partial
normalization, or if that fails, returns the original input.
Rcmd sub-commands except config and
Sd2d are now handled internally rather by shell scripts.
Rcmd has a new sub-command texify to run
MiKTeX's ‘texify.exe’ with arguments to find files such as
‘Sweave.sty’. See the examples in ?Sweave.
system(intern = FALSE) now returns 127 (the
same as Unix-alikes) rather than -1 if the command cannot
be run, and (like Unix-alikes) no longer gives a warning.
Rscript -e and similar use a temporary file, and
now work harder to ensure that filename is not the same as some
other simultaneous R process.
gcc 4.5.0: see the ‘R
Installation and Administration Manual’.
There is a combined installer (called ‘R-<version>-win.exe’). When used under 32-bit Windows this works as before and installs 32-bit R. When used under 64-bit Windows there are options to install either or both of 32- and 64-bit R: the default is to install both.
The default package type is "win.binary" on both 32- and
64-bit builds: a single repository contains binary packages for
both architectures. This is in place for CRAN, CRAN extras and
BioC: type = "win64.binary" can still be used for any
repositories which follow the R 2.11.x convention. With the
default filters (see ?available.packages) packages will
only be offered if they are available for the current
architecture.
The default personal library, e.g. ‘~/R/win-library/2.12’ is now the same for both 32- and 64-bit R.
Tcl binary distribution for 2.12.x is in file
‘R64a_Tcl_8-5-8.zip’ and contains e.g. directory
‘Tcl/bin64’ and not ‘Tcl/bin’.
R (>= 2.9) ).
${R_HOME}/bin${R_ARCH_BIN} as a
portable way to find the binaries such as ‘Rscript.exe’.
R.exe when used in place of Rterm.exe
set the environment variables set by R CMD. Conversely,
R CMD BATCH did not.
file.rename() now waits for the rename to complete
before returning, so that operations on the new filename will
not fail.
Sys.info() and win.version() now report
Windows 7 as such (and not as Vista), and Sys.info() now
reports the machine type as "x86-64" on 64-bit platforms.
serialize() to a raw vector works around the dismal
performance of Windows' memory manager by allocating much larger
chunks of memory less frequently.
readClipboard() could cause a segfault with certain
clipboard data.
iconv(x, from, "") in a C locale was
interpreted as requesting translation to UTF-8.
system(intern=TRUE) often returned 0
rather than an error status if the command could not be found, if
run from Rterm or from Rgui with
show.output.on.console = FALSE.
memory.limit() did not allow sizes greater than
4095 on 64 bit builds. (PR#14372)
Rgui console, pagers and editor on the 64-bit
build now have a title bar icon.
Rgui/Rterm mentions
'(64-bit)' to make it easier to distinguish running copies of R.
Install
package(s) ... menu are now explicitly sorted in the current
locale (as they were in most previous releases, but not in
2.11.0).
R CMD INSTALL can install zipfiles as binary
packages.
Rcmd cmd (or R CMD cmd) now runs an
arbitrary 'cmd' if 'cmd' is not one of the
builtin commands, and does not have extension '‘.sh’' or
'‘.pl’' (when it is run as a shell or Perl script
respectively). This is done by passing 'cmd' to the
command interpreter determined by the COMSPEC environment
variable (which in a vanilla Windows system points to
‘cmd.exe’).
X11() and x11() gain additional arguments to
be more similar to the Unix X11() device.
file.rename() can work across volumes (by copy-and-delete).
strftime(format = "%z") now gives the timezone names
used by the Olson database and not those used by Windows.
iconv(to = "ASCII") no longer transliterates, but
iconv(to = "ASCII//TRANSLIT") will. This makes
tools::showNonASCII() work the same way as on other platforms.
readRegistry() can look at either the 32- or 64-bit view
of the Registry on 64-bit Windows.
Tcl timezone files (3Mb on disc) are now an
optional part of the installation: they would be very rarely used
with R.
‘MkRules.local’ can be generated by copying and editing ‘MkRules.dist’.
ALLUSERS property to 1).
This can be changed at installation, and it can be built for a
user-mode install (see ‘MkRules.dist’).
ESC to interrupt a system() call could
cause R to become unstable.
0^1i (which should be complex NAN) was
incorrect.
"Open Script")
did not return the focus to the console if the user cancelled the
action.
system() (and hence shell()) did not always
set the standard file handles properly, so some programs would
not run.
setWinProgressBar() did not check the type of its
'title' and 'label' arguments and might have
crashed if they were mis-specified. It now does, thanks to a
report by Greg Snow.
Rcmd INSTALL once again uses
--no-restore, for consistency with the Unix version and
R 2.9.2.
windows() now has a parameter fillOddEven
(default TRUE), which controls the mode used for polygon
fills of self-intersecting shapes.
arrangeWindows() and
getWindowsHandles() have been added to give more
programmatic control to the appearance of windows in an R
session.
libpng library has been updated to version 1.2.40.
build, check,
Rprof, Sd2Rd in ‘R_HOME/bin’ now have extension
‘.pl’.
Rcmd (or R CMD) can now run ‘.sh’ (shell)
and ‘.pl’ (Perl) scripts anywhere on the path (as well as
‘.bat’ and ‘.exe’ files as before).
Rcmd SHLIB (which is used by Rcmd
INSTALL) now calls make without a target, rather than
target 'all'. This is now the same as on Unix, and was
announced in the ‘NEWS’ file for 2.9.0.
Options --use-zip and --use-zip-help in
R CMD INSTALL are no longer available and
--auto-zip only zips data (or not).
Help in packages installed under 2.9.x may not work correctly,
and a warning is given when such a package is attached by
library(). Re-installation of all packages is strongly
recommended (use update.packages(checkBuilt = TRUE)).
Binary packages are installed without CHM help if they contain it (as those intended for 2.9.x may).
Rcmd open now works as documented: previously
Rcmd open.exe was required.
cat(x, file=) in Rgui tried to interpret
UTF-8-encoded strings for the console rather than converting them
to the native encoding.