Re: [Rd] NEWS file (was faqs)
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Simon Urbanek wrote: On Nov 15, 2007, at 10:53 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote: On 11/15/2007 9:57 AM, Simon Urbanek wrote: On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:55 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: inst/NEWS would have the advantage of consistency with R itself which also has a NEWS file. I vote for NEWS for reasons above plus because that's what I use in my packages already ;). IMHO it should be installed automatically if present, i.e. it shouldn't be necessary to have it in inst/NEWS, just plain NEWS should suffice. And you're volunteering to make that change? Yup, in R-devel now (43464). However, there are other candidate files as well and we don't do anything with the NEWS file just yet ... any further ideas? We've recommended inst/NEWS for some time (some people are late to this party), and tens of packages have it. However, a further tens of packages have a top-level NEWS, and I would assume that (at least some of) the authors were deliberately not installing it and so will now need to rename it. I think the writeup needs to make clear what happens if you have both NEWS and inst/NEWS (some packages do). -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UKFax: +44 1865 272595 __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] NEWS file (was faqs)
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:20:36 + (GMT), Prof Brian Ripley (PBR) wrote: On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Simon Urbanek wrote: On Nov 15, 2007, at 10:53 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote: On 11/15/2007 9:57 AM, Simon Urbanek wrote: On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:55 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: inst/NEWS would have the advantage of consistency with R itself which also has a NEWS file. I vote for NEWS for reasons above plus because that's what I use in my packages already ;). IMHO it should be installed automatically if present, i.e. it shouldn't be necessary to have it in inst/NEWS, just plain NEWS should suffice. And you're volunteering to make that change? Yup, in R-devel now (43464). However, there are other candidate files as well and we don't do anything with the NEWS file just yet ... any further ideas? We've recommended inst/NEWS for some time (some people are late to this party), and tens of packages have it. However, a further tens of packages have a top-level NEWS, and I would assume that (at least some of) the authors were deliberately not installing it and so will now need to rename it. I think the writeup needs to make clear what happens if you have both NEWS and inst/NEWS (some packages do). As most having both are by me I also checked the rest: In all cases on CRAN they are identical copies. I have a soft link in all my packages from inst/NEWS to top level (such that it gets installed, but it is also easily found in the sources). If we install the top-level NEWS file I would remove the link (but as Brian said, we've been there before). Best, Fritz __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
[Rd] re sponses to issues on r-devel
I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but ...
What is the best way to get 'important' issues resolved
by R-core? There is a category of 'issues' (I won't call
them bugs or problems, although arguably they are so)
that appear on R-devel and sink without ever receiving an
explicit acknowledgment. These problems tend to be:
* non-trivial
* outside of the main current interests (perhaps) of R-core
I'm thinking in this case of Petr Savicky's series of posts
http://www.nabble.com/bug-in-detection-of-zero-state-for-Mersenne-Twister-%28PR-10362%29-tf4670916.html#a13343487
http://www.nabble.com/initial-scrambling-of-seed-in-do_setseed---RNG_Init-tf4504008.html#a12845234
http://www.nabble.com/all-zeroes-in-Mersenne-Twister-state-may-remain-undetected-tf4626354.html#a13210502
http://www.nabble.com/predictable-bit-patterns-in-runif%28n%29-shortly-after-set.seed-tf4641681.html#a13257396
all between Sept 23 and October 15. One of these was posted as a bug, but
the rest are just
ideas. However, they are very thoroughly documented ideas (with suggested
patches),
and it would be a shame if they fell between the cracks. They might be on
R-core's to do list already -- or
someone may have replied off-list -- or R-core might have read the posts and
decided
that they are not worth worrying about -- or R-core might go through the
archives
looking for these kinds of unresolved issues from time to time.
Arguably the best solution to this kind of problem is just persistence by
the 'R-cortex' (OED:
{dag}1. fig. The external part; the outer shell or husk. Obs.) [by which I
mean the people like
Petr who are capable of finding, diagnosing and creating useful patches],
re-posting
to R-devel every month or so if issues remain unresolved. My *personal*
feeling
is that posting these kinds of issues as bugs, where they can be remembered
and dealt with,
is a good idea, but I'm prepared to be shouted down ...
Is this a problem? Is there a solution?
(Please don't blame Petr for these comments, I'm just using his ideas as
an example)
cheers
Ben Bolker
--
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/responses-to-issues-on-r-devel-tf4806780.html#a13752138
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[Rd] Returning vectors of two different data types back to R environment (from C).
Hello, Quick question. I have written a C function - I would like to make it return two vectors to the R environment - one STRSXP vector, and one INTSXP vector. Is this possible/ easy to do using the API? I looked, but could not find the answer to this question in the Writing R Extensions guide. Thanks very much for your help! Charles [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Returning vectors of two different data types back to R environment (from C).
Charles Danko wrote: Hello, Quick question. I have written a C function - I would like to make it return two vectors to the R environment - one STRSXP vector, and one INTSXP vector. Is this possible/ easy to do using the API? I looked, but could not find the answer to this question in the Writing R Extensions guide. How does any R function return two different-typed values back to its caller? With a list - like list(foo=1,bar='baz'). Construct an R list in your C code and return that... R Extensions should tell you how! Barry __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Returning vectors of two different data types back to R environment (from C).
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007, Charles Danko wrote: Hello, Quick question. I have written a C function - I would like to make it return two vectors to the R environment - one STRSXP vector, and one INTSXP vector. Is this possible/ easy to do using the API? I looked, but could not find the answer to this question in the Writing R Extensions guide. Put them in a list? The SEXP function in the .Call() interface then returns a list wich you unpack on the R side. There are plenty of examples in the base code and in numerous contributed packages. Thanks very much for your help! Charles [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -- Roger Bivand Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] C/C++ 'assert' should not be used in R packages
On Nov 10, 2007 1:27 PM, Simon Urbanek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 10, 2007, at 1:05 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote: On 10/11/2007 1:00 PM, Duncan Temple Lang wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Duncan Murdoch wrote: Prof Brian Ripley wrote: Please don't use 'assert' in R packages. If called, this means that an error in your code aborts the whole R process, including your user's work. I see several R packages doing this, and one of them called 'assert' on me earlier in the week. I partly disagree about this. If assert() is triggered, it clearly indicates a bug in the package. If it just generated an R error, most users would ignore it, and not report it to the package maintainer. It may well be that when an assertion fails, none of the subsequent calculations are reliable, in which case returning control to the user could result in data corruption. That's worse than losing a session, because at least when you lose a session, you know it. Could we write our own implementation of assert() that displays an R error and unloads the package? I think I could do something like that in Windows by calling FreeLibrary to unload the DLL, but I'd prefer a cross-platform solution. I am not sure why you think we need to discard the DLL. The package author has asserted that it is no longer safe to run. They are shutting down R, and Brian finds that too extreme. Me too. A package should never intentionally close the R session. If it does, it is a very severe design bug in the package (IMHO). Anything you use assert for can be gracefully handled (as opposed to let's say a segfault), so there is no excuse for killing the whole process at all (deliberately wiping all user's work is rude to put it mildly). Oh, I normally try to wipe the harddrive too when I'm at it ;) /H Even if it might be unsafe to run anything, I'd still want to attempt to save my data. Cheers, Simon What if we want to access variables and routines merely to find out the resulting state after the assert(). And it is not clear whether you mean any subsequent calculations or any subsequent calculations using code within this DLL might be unreliable. How could I know why a package author decided a shutdown is needed? It depends on the author. But regardless of that and the assumption that users will ignore this error, why would you want to call FreeLibrary? Since R has induced the DLL to be loaded either directly or indirectly, R holds a handle to the DLL. If you don't use R's cross-platform facilities for releasing the DLL (either at the R or C-level), you will corrupt the session, specifically in the list of assumed-live DLLs. As I said, I'd prefer a cross-platform solution. Duncan Murdoch D. We provide 'error': please do use it to return control to the user when your code misbehaves. Similarly 'exit' and 'abort' should never be used in R packages. Sometimes it is not under your control: I sometimes see an rgl failure at R: indirect_vertex_array.c:659: emit_DrawArrays_old: Assertion `elements_per_request = count' failed. that is coming from the Mesa GL libraries. I'd say that's a bug, either in Mesa GL or in rgl. If you can make it reproducible, I'll try to track it down. Duncan Murdoch __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHNfHA9p/Jzwa2QP4RAo2BAJkB5QaFLOW5fcR6QE9JSXpIWAcEUwCggMYK 2WBnl5jDgTUayU5wk8hnQj4= =91by -END PGP SIGNATURE- __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Returning vectors of two different data types back to R environment (from C).
On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 03:49:09PM -0500, Charles Danko wrote: Hello, Quick question. I have written a C function - I would like to make it return two vectors to the R environment - one STRSXP vector, and one INTSXP vector. Is this possible/ easy to do using the API? I looked, but could not find the answer to this question in the Writing R Extensions guide. Yes, it's really quite reasonable to do, although it's not documented in detail in the R-extensions manual. As stated earlier, this will only work with .Call and SEXP functions where you can handle R objects within C. In Section 5.9 Evaluating R expressions in C it has an example using lists in C. Basically, lists are VECSXP objects so you can search for that in R-exts. Also, I would recommend looking at 5.7.6 Handling lists and the function: SEXP getListElement(SEXP list, char *str) You should look for that, and then grep the source files for examples. If you don't have grep to search the files, then I would recommend the R gonzui site: http://rgonzui.nakama.ne.jp/ Personally, I found the source code for det() to be a useful example, you can search for that on R gonzui. Good Luck __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] Returning vectors of two different data types back to R environment (from C).
SEXP x,y,res; PROTECT(res = allocVector(VECSXP, 2)); SET_VECTOR_ELT(res, 0, x = allocVector(REALSXP, 20)); SET_VECTOR_ELT(res, 1, y = allocVector(INTSXP, 10)); // code with x,y goes here UNPROTECT(1); return res; On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 15:49 -0500, Charles Danko wrote: Hello, Quick question. I have written a C function - I would like to make it return two vectors to the R environment - one STRSXP vector, and one INTSXP vector. Is this possible/ easy to do using the API? I looked, but could not find the answer to this question in the Writing R Extensions guide. Thanks very much for your help! Charles [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] faqs
On Nov 15, 2007 10:51 AM, Gabor Grothendieck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 15, 2007 9:57 AM, Simon Urbanek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:55 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: inst/NEWS would have the advantage of consistency with R itself which also has a NEWS file. I vote for NEWS for reasons above plus because that's what I use in my packages already ;). IMHO it should be installed automatically if present, i.e. it shouldn't be necessary to have it in inst/NEWS, just plain NEWS should suffice. I agree that that would be desirable. Also it would be nice if the HTML files here: http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Descriptions/ each had a link to the NEWS file so one could get the news on a package prior to installing it. __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
