[Rd] Sweave resource leak: leftover temp files (PR#7998)

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> This is actually a Windows bug.  Those files are unlink()ed, and it seems 
>> Windows is not respecting that (not an unknown phenomenon).  I have tried a 
>> few workarounds, and am about to commit one that seems to work.
>
> I guess you mean the C unlink, since I don't see the R unlink being called.

Yes, I do, but the R unlink calls the C unlink and so has the same 
problem.

> Generally deletes fail on Windows when files are locked, e.g. open for 
> reading or writing.  I haven't seen Windows file deletes fail in other 
> circumstances, so I suspect this was an R, MinGW or MSVCRT bug rather than a 
> Windows bug.

But unlink() is required by POSIX to work when files are open, so it is a 
MSVCRT `feature' (and that is part of Windows since Win95 OSR2).  Indeed, 
there is nothing in the MSDN documentation on unlink() that says anything 
about not working if files are `locked'.

If people use the same name and arg sequence of a standard library call 
and partially implement it without saying so or mentioning the 
restrictions I believe it is perfectly reasonable to call that a bug.

>
> Duncan Murdoch
>> 
>> No files are left over on a decent operating system, e.g. Solaris or FC3 
>> Linux.
>> 
>> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 murdoch at stats.uwo.ca wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> Harold, I've taken a closer look at your example and I'd call this an
>>> Sweave bug.  It creates tempfiles each time you run it, and doesn't
>>> delete them at the end.  For example:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> list.files(tempdir())
>>> 
>>> character(0)
>>> 
>>>> testfile <- system.file("Sweave", "Sweave-test-1.Rnw", package = "utils")
>>>> Sweave(testfile, out="junk.tex")
>>> 
>>> Writing to file junk.tex
>>> Processing code chunks ...
>>> 1 : print term verbatim
>>> 2 : term hide
>>> 3 : echo print term verbatim
>>> 4 : term verbatim
>>> 5 : echo term verbatim
>>> 6 : echo term verbatim eps pdf
>>> 7 : echo term verbatim eps pdf
>>> 
>>> You can now run LaTeX on 'junk.tex'
>>> 
>>>> list.files(tempdir())
>>> 
>>> [1] "Rf10523" "Rf13872" "Rf17129" "Rf2055"  "Rf2203"  "Rf2403"  "Rf27095"
>>> [8] "Rf2892"  "Rf31415" "Rf5290"  "Rf6251"  "Rf6482"  "Rf7055"  "Rf724"
>>> 
>>>> Sweave(testfile, out="C:/temp/junk.tex")
>>> 
>>> Writing to file C:/temp/junk.tex
>>> Processing code chunks ...
>>> 1 : print term verbatim
>>> 2 : term hide
>>> 3 : echo print term verbatim
>>> 4 : term verbatim
>>> 5 : echo term verbatim
>>> 6 : echo term verbatim eps pdf
>>> 7 : echo term verbatim eps pdf
>>> 
>>> You can now run LaTeX on 'C:/temp/junk.tex'
>>> 
>>>> list.files(tempdir())
>>> 
>>> [1] "Rf10523" "Rf12679" "Rf1311"  "Rf13484" "Rf13872" "Rf17129" "Rf17288"
>>> [8] "Rf2055"  "Rf21774" "Rf2203"  "Rf23417" "Rf2403"  "Rf27095" "Rf2892"
>>> [15] "Rf29444" "Rf31128" "Rf31415" "Rf32520" "Rf3338"  "Rf5290"  "Rf5551"
>>> [22] "Rf6251"  "Rf6482"  "Rf7055"  "Rf724"   "Rf7543"  "Rf758"   "Rf7673"
>>> 
>>>> unlink(list.files(tempdir(),full=T))
>>>> list.files(tempdir())
>>> 
>>> character(0)
>>> 
>>> Harold:  a workaround for this would be to wrap your Sweave call in
>>> something like this:
>>> 
>>> keep <- list.files(tempdir(), full=TRUE)  # keep previous temp files
>>> 
>>> ... Call Sweave here ...
>>> 
>>> temps <- list.files(tempdir(), full=TRUE)
>>> unlink(temps[!(temps %in% keep)])  # delete the newly created ones
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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