[R] Problem with mgcv PACKAGES file format?

[Robert King]

Hello All,

I'm getting this error (Version: 1.9.0-1 on a debian system)

> update.packages("mgcv")
trying URL `ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/cran/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
ftp data connection made, file length 169516 bytes
opened URL
.......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
.......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
.......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
.......... .....
downloaded 165Kb

Error in "colnames<-"(`*tmp*`, value = c("Package", "LibPath", pkgFlds)) :
        attempt to set colnames on object with less than two dimensions

The relevant section of the package file is:

Package: mgcv
Version: 1.0-8
Author: Simon Wood
Maintainer: Simon Wood
Title: Multiple smoothing parameter estimation and GAMs by GCV
Description: Routines for GAMs and other generalized ridge regression
             with multiple smoothing parameter selection by GCV or UBRE.
             Also GAMMs by REML or PQL. Includes a gam() function.
Priority: recommended
Depends: R (>= 1.9.0), nlme (>= 3.1-40), MASS (>= 7.1-11)
License: GPL version 2 or later
Packaged: Wed May 26 11:17:05 2004; simon

Is the error a result of something I can't see in the format of this?  I'm
guessing it must be because its occuring before the download attempts, so
R won't have seen the actual package file?


----
Robert King, Statistics, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences,
University of Newcastle, Australia
Room V133  ph +61 2 4921 5548
Robert.King at newcastle.edu.au   http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/

"It's easy to lie with statistics.  It's even easier to lie without them."
	-- Frederick Mosteller