'help' Fails on Windows: "Invalid Argument" to 'file.create'

[GregYannes]

Hello! I believe there is an issue specific to Windows, when using box::help() to view the interactive "Help" window in RStudio.

While box::help() worked just fine on my Mac (Mojave), I got this warning on Windows (10 Enterprise)

Warning messages:
1: In utils::packageDescription(package, fields = "Version") :
  no package 'PKG' was found
2: In file.create(to[okay]) :
  cannot create file 'C:\Users\greg\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpYBTTyG/.R/doc/html/module:Resources/Modules/time.html', reason 'Invalid argument'

along with a URL not found message in an otherwise blank "Help" window.

I suspect the issue lies in the .../module:Resources/... component, which contains a : that is illegal for directory names on Windows. When I try file.create() on Windows with a similarly illegal filepath, I replicate this warning: cannot create file and reason 'Invalid argument'.

Unless I am much mistaken, line 87 of help.R is the culprit:

display_help(doc, paste0('module:', mod_name), help_type)
#                               ^
#                             Here

[klmr]

Working on a fix.

In the meantime, as a workaround in the R terminal you can use

box::help(your$topic, help_type = 'text')

This will display text help instead of HTML help.

Unfortunately the same doesn’t seem to work in RStudio (at least in my version, 1.3.1093), due to a bug in RStudio (unrelated to ‘box’).

[klmr]

Oh that’s weird, that’s definitely not how it’s supposed to look. Here’s what this looks like for me (Windows 10):

[GregYannes]

Ooops, my bad! I completely overlooked your warning

Unfortunately the same doesn’t seem to work in RStudio (at least in my version, 1.3.1093), due to a bug in RStudio (unrelated to ‘box’).

and my weird output was from RStudio. I will delete my comment accordingly.

[GregYannes]

My apologies for the confusion about text help, by the way. And thank you for elaborating with your answer on Stack Overflow!

[klmr]

The error should hopefully be fixed now. Before the next CRAN update I’m still working on two other features but you can already install the new version. Either from source by following the source installation instructions in the README; or by downloading the compiled package below, and executing

install.packages('path/to/box_1.0.2.9000.zip', repos = NULL)

📦 box_1.0.2.9000.zip

[GregYannes]

Awesome, I can't wait to test it out!

Thanks again, Konrad! I truly appreciate your accessibility and responsiveness*, and I look forward to taking our team to the next level with the new and improved box. :)

* It's worth noting that our Head of Software Development was equally impressed.