[BUGZILLA #16311] It would be nice if system2 could generally set environment variables from env argument

[MichaelChirico]

Created attachment 1791 [details]
sample showing the problem, requires testthat, but can be easily altered

system2() does not set environment variables properly (at least, other not tested) on Windows OS. While documentation is somewhat vague regarding env argument. I tried named character vector and just a character vector with name=value pairs with same result. Using Sys.setenv() works as expected. Sample R script is attached.

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METADATA

• Bug author - Mikhail Titov
• Creation time - 2015-04-14 18:30:16 UTC
• Bugzilla link
• Status - NEW
• Alias - None
• Component - I/O
• Version - R 3.1.2
• Hardware - x86_64/x64/amd64 (64-bit) Windows 64-bit
• Importance - P5 enhancement
• Assignee - R-core
• URL -
• Modification time - 2015-04-14 19:55 UTC

[MichaelChirico]

I failed to mention the R version as there was no such in a drop down box.

R.version

           _                           

platform i386-w64-mingw32
arch i386
os mingw32
system i386, mingw32
status
major 3
minor 1.3
year 2015
month 03
day 09
svn rev 67962
language R
version.string R version 3.1.3 (2015-03-09)
nickname Smooth Sidewalk

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METADATA

• Comment author - Mikhail Titov
• Timestamp - 2015-04-14 18:33:42 UTC

[MichaelChirico]

Apparently I missed the note in docs mentioning the limitation on Windows. So I change this to "enhancement". It would be handy, e.g. to run python scripts with non-standard installations requiring setting PYTHONHOME, PATH and such.

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METADATA

• Comment author - Mikhail Titov
• Timestamp - 2015-04-14 19:55:49 UTC

[github-actions]

NA

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METADATA

• Comment author - Sebastian Meyer
• Timestamp - 2020-09-23 11:47:51 UTC