[Rd] model.frame problem

[Prof Brian Ripley]

It is already fixed, in three steps:

R-2.12.0:

     • model.frame had an unstated 500 byte limit on variable names.
       (Example reported by Terry Therneau.)

R-patched:

     • The data.frame method of format failed if a column name was
       longer than 256 bytes (the maximum length allowed for an R name).

R-devel:

     • The previously almost undocumented limit of 256 bytes on a symbol
       name has been raised to 10,000 bytes (a sanity check).  Long
       symbol names can sometimes occur when deparsing expressions (for
       example, in model.frame).



On Wed, 3 Nov 2010, Terry Therneau wrote:

> A few weeks ago I reported a problem with model.frame, whose root lay
> in a formula expression "....+ ratetable(x1=x1, x2=x2, ....x100=x100)"
> that was really long and caused model.frame to fail.  Brian had some
> indefinite ideas on what might need to change in the base code to handle
> it.
>
>  In survival_2.36-1 the bit of code that generated the offending
> expression has been changed (mostly for other reasons).  The problem
> case in question no longer is generated.  If fixing this issue was on
> anyone's list of things to do, feel free to drop the priority to zero.
> (You could still generate this with just exactly the right call to
> pyears, but I'll be boarding up that final door in 2.36-2.)
>
> Terry Therneau
>
>

-- 
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)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
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