[R] Passing strings with spaces to Python using system2 splits string at whitespace

John McKown john.archie.mckown at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 16:14:20 CEST 2015


On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 8:47 AM, Wall, Wade A ERDC-RDE-CERL-IL <
Wade.A.Wall at usace.army.mil> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am trying to pass arguments to a python script using R, but am running
> into a problem with the string being split on the white spaces.
> Investigation on the python end suggests that it is happening upstream from
> python, because other shells such as bash have generated similar errors.
>
> Here is example code.
>
> R script:
>
> test = "./Example.py"
> string1 = "ThisWorks"
> string2 = "This doesn't"
>
> system2('python',args = c(as.character(test),as.character(string1))) ##
> This works
> system2('python',args = c(as.character(test),as.character(string2))) ##
> This doesn't
>

​use shQuote, like:

system2('python',args=shQuote(c(as.character(test),as.character(string2))))​


> Python script:
>
> from sys import argv
> script, string = argv
> print script
> print string
>
> What happens is that string 2 is splits into "This" and "doesn't". Does
> anyone know how to resolve this issue? Of course I can remove the white
> spaces, but that may be somewhat inconvenient.
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Wade
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>

​Please don't use HTML email. It often causes messages to be unreadable​,
although not in this particular case.



>
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-- 
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John McKown

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]



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