[Rd] extra parentheses cause death of kernel (PR#8094)

[rowe@psych.ucsb.edu]

I try to type quickly, and sometimes I make mistakes that cost me more
than I think they should...  It appears that any time I quickly type a
sequence such as:

quartz()

I am rewarded with the following text in red:

2005-08-24 11:02:42.388 R[2198] *** -[NSCFDate characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized
2005-08-24 11:02:42.390 R[2198] *** NSTimer discarding exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException' (reason '*** -[NSCFDate
characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized') that raised during firing of timer with target 3c8e40 and selector 'kickstart:'

printed above the command line, an extra opening parenthesis at the
end of the command line, and after that, I can't get R to do anything.
It gives me a prompt and acts like it's waiting for commands -- it
will allow me to step back through and edit previous commands, but it
won't execute anything.  With one exception...  if I type a similar
sequence, I can get a message similar to the above error message added
underneath the first (still above the command line).  The second error
looks like:

2005-08-24 11:25:27.952 R[2227] *** -[NSConcreteValue characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized
2005-08-24 11:25:27.982 R[2227] *** -[NSConcreteValue characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized

and I can get as many copies of it or a variant:

2005-08-24 11:28:19.129 R[2227] *** -[NSCFDate characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized
2005-08-24 11:28:19.130 R[2227] *** -[NSCFDate characterAtIndex:]: selector not recognized

as I want by trying to create a string that ends "()" and not typing slowly.

My system:

   platform powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
   arch     powerpc                  
   os       darwin7.9.0              
   system   powerpc, darwin7.9.0     
   status   Patched                  
   major    2                        
   minor    1.0                      
   year     2005                     
   month    05                       
   day      12                       
   language R                        

---

I've tried this several times and verified the behavior.  The "quartz"
part is not important; I just verified it again with "plot.new()",
"garbage()", and "foo()".  Typing opening and closing parentheses in
rapid succession causes an extra opening parenthesis to show up on the
command line and the death of the command line interpreter (but it
does still show you command line completions on the bottom of the
window).  The only exception I've found is when there is no character
string at all before the opening parenthesis.  Then you can type as
quickly as you want with no ill effects.

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (mrowe at lifesci.ucsb.edu)