[GRASS-windows] r.report, r.patch

[Helena Mitasova]

On Sep 30, 2008, at 6:06 PM, Glynn Clements wrote:

>
> Helena Mitasova wrote:
>
>> 1. r.report does not work for two students (one has VISTA one has XP)
>> it does not print anything - it works for me
>> and others - has anybody had a similar problem?
>
> Maybe a problem with writing temporary files?
>
> This (amongst other things[1]) will fail if there are spaces in
> $GISDBASE. r.report constructs and executes (with system()) an r.stats
> command which redirects to a temporary file, and the temporary
> filename isn't quoted.

The installer puts the sample data locations into a directory with a  
space[1]
in its name so that may be it. For the lab computers I have moved the  
data into
a directory that does not have space in its name but the students  
that have
problems might have kept it in the original directory - I will check  
for that.

[1]The sample data files will be installed into a directory called  
GIS DataBase,
that will be created in your Documents folder

>
> I've worked around the issue in 7.0 with r33627, which quotes the
> filename.
>
> More generally, we need to start eradicating the use of system() in
> favour of e.g. G_spawn_ex(). Apart from anything else, this means that
> someone needs to do a proper port to Windows using CreateProcess().
>
> [There's currently a half-baked Windows version based around
> spawnvpe(), but it doesn't handle redirection. Redirecting to a named
> file could be fudged with spawnvpe(), but not redirecting to an open
> handle.]
>
> FWIW, I count 41 occurrences of [G_]system and [G_]popen in 7.0.
>
> [1] In the process of converting the scripts to Python, I've noticed
> that the output from "v.db.connect -g" isn't suitable for its intended
> purpose, as it uses spaces to separate the fields, even though one of
> the fields is typically a filename.
>
>> 2. r.patch does not work for one student on VISTA-
>> it is exactly the same problem reported as bug #118 but
>> according to bug tracker it was fixed and closed
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/118
>> The command works for me and others on XP. Is there anybody else
>> who still has this problem? Michael did your students get it working?
>
> I think that Windows users will ultimately need to ensure GISDBASE is
> within their "Documents" directory. But that will require fixing the
> myriad spaces-in-pathnames issues such as the above.

at least the sample data get installed there, but the GISDBASE directory
name has a space. We are going quite systematically through GRASS,
mostly raster, some vector commands and this is what we had so far.
I will report whatever else we find.

thanks a lot

Helena

>
> If any non-Windows users want to help out, Unix doesn't prohibit the
> use of spaces in pathnames, so you can put a space in the name of the
> GISDBASE directory and report any errors you encounter.
>
> -- 
> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>