[Rd] model.frame deficiency

[Prof Brian Ripley]

At least for me, the problem is not to do with the length of 
formula.  You have a term in the formula with a very long name, and 
there are several places that can go wrong.  For example, for the N=20 
version I get

> model.frame(as.formula(temp2), tdata) -> foo
> foo
Error in do.call("data.frame", rval) :
   variable names are limited to 256 bytes

For the N=50 case the sticking point is

     varnames <- sapply(vars, deparse, width.cutoff = 500)[-1L]

which could be rewritten as

     varnames <- sapply(vars, function(x) paste(deparse(x,width.cutoff=500), collapse=' '))[-1L]

but you would still not be able to print the result.


On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Terry Therneau wrote:

> The model.frame function has trouble with a certain type of really long
> formula.  Here is a test:
>
> tname <- paste('var', 1:50, sep='')
> tmat <- matrix(rnorm(500), ncol=50, dimnames=list(NULL, tname))
> tdata <- data.frame(tmat)
>
> temp1 <- paste( paste(tname, tname, sep='='), collapse=', ')
> temp2 <- paste("~1 + cbind(", temp1, ")")
> model.frame(as.formula(temp2), tdata)
>
> This came out of a user report to me.  Coxph with a very long formula
> (which does work) followed by a call to survexp leads to a call like the
> above but using my "ratetable" function instead of "cbind".
>
> My machine's details:
> R version 2.10.0 (2009-10-26)
> x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
> [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=C
> [5] LC_MONETARY=C              LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
> [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
> [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] grDevices datasets  splines   graphics  utils     stats
> methods
> [8] base
>
>
> Editorial comment: I said "deficiency" not "bug" above, as I'm not so
> sure how good a model with 75 variables might be in the first place.
> (Though in this case the user is pretty savvy.)
>
> Terry Therneau
>
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>

-- 
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)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595