[Rd] Sweave resource leak: leftover temp files (PR#7998)
murdoch@stats.uwo.ca
murdoch at stats.uwo.ca
Tue Jul 12 15:41:48 CEST 2005
On 7/12/2005 8:58 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 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.
This is documented in the API call DeleteFile. I wouldn't call MSVCRT
part of Windows, but I guess this is the same thing as saying that Linux
is the kernel, not the whole collection of things you get in a Linux
distribution.
Windows provides a different mechanism for this, the
FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE flag to CreateFile(). Your patch has solved
the problem, so I can't see that it would be worthwhile using this, but
one way to implement the POSIX behaviour would be to open a file with
this flag, then immediately close it. As long as all other handles to
the file are eventually closed the file should be deleted.
Duncan
>
>>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
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