[ESS] Interactive SAS mode hangs

[Erin Jonaitis]

Hi Rodney,

Thanks so much for your reply. I share your belief that this should work! :)

I'm trying to find the SAS shell script without a lot of success. I'm not familiar with the conventions you're using in your command below -- should my command look something like
/usr/share/emacs/etc/ess/ess-sas-sh-command [arguments]?

I found a path that starts similarly:
/usr/share/emacs/24.3/etc/

but I don't see any trace of ESS. I looked in my .emacs file to find out where ESS is actually loading from, and this is where I found the file you mention:
/opt/ess-15.03/etc/ess-sas-sh-command

I tell you this for two reasons. One, could this different location be part of the problem? Two, the command you suggested didn't work -- I switched to that directory and typed
$ ess-sas-sh-command /dev/stdout /dev/stderr -stdio -noovp

and got: 
$ bash: ess-sas-sh-command: command not found...

So I ran 
$ less ess-sas-sh-command

and this is what I see:

#!/bin/sh
### A whole bunch of comments, GPL,etc

### This is commented out
#echo $0 $@
#sas </dev/tty 1>$1 2>$2 $3

### This isn't
set -x
stdout=$1
stderr=$2
shift 2
set +x
echo sas \</dev/tty 1\>$stdout 2\>$stderr $@
sas </dev/tty 1>$stdout 2>$stderr $@


The permissions on the file are 755 so in theory I should be able to execute it, but at any rate, hopefully seeing the file's innards answers the question you had.

Erin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sparapani, Rodney" <rsparapa at mcw.edu>
To: jonaitis at fstrf-wi.org
Cc: "ess-help" <ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 7:59:47 AM
Subject: Re: Interactive SAS mode hangs

> 
> Dear Rodney et al,
> 
> I'm still chasing down a problem with a new ESS install -- namely, when I am in M-x SAS mode, running C-c C-p on
> something as simple as a data step hangs the system. Setting the debug flag to t and trying again
> unfortunately does not produce any informative errors. M-x ess-sas-interactive does run code
> properly, although it won't allow me to view the .log or .lst files as I work, the way I'm accustomed to
> doing. (That is, it doesn't open buffers automatically the way M-x SAS does, and if I open the relevant
> files in new buffers, I only see a static version of each, not a version that updates as I step through the code.)
> 
> The last time I wrote to you, a few weeks ago, the suggestion (echoed below) was that version
> incompatibility between ESS and Emacs might explain my problem (or at least be a thing to rule out). I
> passed this on to our tech support team and it spiraled into upgrading to a new version of Red Hat (7.0);
> we've now done that, and are on GNU Emacs 24.3.1 and ESS 15.03, which I think are both reasonably recent
> versions, respectively. However the hanging behavior is still there.
> 
> Do you have any advice on what I/we should try next?
> 
> Erin

Hi Erin:

Wow, you upgraded the whole machine!  I'm impressed.  

You are now running basically the same setup I have used successfully.
This definitely should work.  When it hangs, did you try C-c C-c?
There are other interrupts that you can send from the Signals menu,
but usually Break (C-c C-c) is what you want for a hang.

Also, look at the SAS shell script that ESS uses.  It can be found
in PREFIX/share/emacs/etc/ess/ess-sas-sh-command  It should have
+rx privileges for you.  You can test it from the command line...
$ PREFIX/share/emacs/etc/ess/ess-sas-sh-command /dev/stdout /dev/stderr -stdio -noovp

Rodney