R ff package ffsave 'zip' not found

Question

Playable example:

library("ff") m <- matrix(1:12, 3, 4, dimnames=list(c("r1","r2","r3"), c("m1","m2","m3","m4"))) v <- 1:3 ffm <- as.ff(m) ffv <- as.ff(v) d <- data.frame(m, v) ffd <- ffdf(ffm, v=ffv, row.names=row.names(ffm)) ffsave(ffd,file="C:\\Users\\R.wd\\ff\\ffd") ## Error in system(cmd, input = filelist, intern = TRUE) : 'zip' not found 

System: Windows 7 64bit, R 15.2 64bit

Rtools Installed

zip 300xn-x64 and unzip 600xn folders already installed in Windows Path

Work with cmd, enter zip or unzip it, showing function information

Need help! Any suggestion is appreciated.

Answer 1

It seems your path is not set for Zip, set the path in environment variables. If you do not want to set the path for the entire process, you can do this for a single command-line session with the SET command, but then you must start your R during the same session.

Answer 2

The "zip" error was not found, the problem is not unique to the ff package. Here is a simple solution.

• Download Rtools https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/
• Open Rtools and browse to the bin folder. Rtools> bin
• In a separate window, open your path r. For example, I have C: \ Program Files \ R \ R-2.15.2 \ bin \ x64 ( more in CRAN R for Windows FAQs )
• Copy the Rtools "zip" application (from 2) to the r path folder (from 3)

Now you can save the file. If you want to download the file, you will also need to copy the decompression to your r path folder.

Answer 3

Some of the links and downloads referenced in the documentation seem outdated. Here are the steps that are known to work on Windows 7, 64 bit: For ffsave and ffload to work correctly:

 # Download zip 3.x and unzip 5.x. The correct URLs are: # http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zip.htm # http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/unzip.htm # Install both (they default to the same GnuWin32 directory). # Put the installation \bin folder on the system PATH # Restart R studio.