diff --git a/R/pkg/R/client.R b/R/pkg/R/client.R
index cf2e5ddeb7a9..3d2c2088f7a1 100644
--- a/R/pkg/R/client.R
+++ b/R/pkg/R/client.R
@@ -43,6 +43,20 @@ determineSparkSubmitBin <- function() {
   sparkSubmitBinName
 }
 
+# R supports both file separator in the file path (Unix : / and Windows: \) irrespective of the operating system
+# but when passing file path to Java or script program, it has to be converted according to operating system
+
+determinefileSeperator <- function() {
+  if (.Platform$OS.type == "unix") {
+    fileSeperator <- .Platform$file.sep    
+    } else {
+#      .Platform$file.sep contains "/" for windows too    
+#      http://www.inside-r.org/r-doc/base/file.path    
+       fileSeperator <- "\\"  
+    }
+ fileSeperator  
+}
+
 generateSparkSubmitArgs <- function(args, sparkHome, jars, sparkSubmitOpts, packages) {
   if (jars != "") {
     jars <- paste("--jars", jars)
@@ -57,9 +71,10 @@ generateSparkSubmitArgs <- function(args, sparkHome, jars, sparkSubmitOpts, pack
 }
 
 launchBackend <- function(args, sparkHome, jars, sparkSubmitOpts, packages) {
-  sparkSubmitBin <- determineSparkSubmitBin()
+  sparkSubmitBinName <- determineSparkSubmitBin()
   if (sparkHome != "") {
-    sparkSubmitBin <- file.path(sparkHome, "bin", sparkSubmitBinName)
+    fileSeperator  <- determinefileSeperator()    
+    sparkSubmitBin <- file.path(sparkHome, "bin", sparkSubmitBinName, fsep = fileSeperator)
   } else {
     sparkSubmitBin <- sparkSubmitBinName
   }
diff --git a/R/pkg/R/sparkR.R b/R/pkg/R/sparkR.R
index 8f81d5640c1d..1bff7df49bea 100644
--- a/R/pkg/R/sparkR.R
+++ b/R/pkg/R/sparkR.R
@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ sparkR.init <- function(
         sparkHome = sparkHome,
         jars = jars,
         sparkSubmitOpts = Sys.getenv("SPARKR_SUBMIT_ARGS", "sparkr-shell"),
-        sparkPackages = sparkPackages)
+        packages = sparkPackages )
     # wait atmost 100 seconds for JVM to launch
     wait <- 0.1
     for (i in 1:25) {