[Rd] C - R integration: Memory Issues

[Nikolaos Bezirgiannidis]

 Hi all,

 I am a PhD student and I am working on a C project that involves some 
 statistical calculations. So, I tried to embed R into C, in order to 
 call R functions from a C program. My program seems to get the correct 
 results from R. However, it appears to have a lot of memory allocation 
 issues, in contrast to the small amounts of memory that my code 
 allocates. Some additional info that might be useful: I have build R 
 from source with shared libraries enabled and the compiler I use is gcc 
 version 4.61 in a Ubuntu 11.10 linux machine.

 This is my function:

 static int prediction(double *berHistory, int berValues, double *ber)
 {
      SEXP e;
      SEXP bers;
      SEXP mean;
      int     i;
      int     errorOccurred;
      static int init = 0;
      char *argv[] = {"REmbeddedPostgres", "--gui=none", "--silent"};
      int argc = sizeof(argv)/sizeof(argv[0]);

      // Initialize Embedded R
      if (init == 0)
      {
           Rf_initEmbeddedR(argc, argv);
      }
      init = 1;

      // Allocate bers and copy values
      PROTECT(bers = allocVector(REALSXP, berValues));
 
      for (i = 0; i < berValues; i++)
      {
           REAL(bers)[i] = berHistory[i];
      }

      PROTECT(mean = allocVector(REALSXP, 1));
      PROTECT(e = lang2(install("mean"), bers));
      mean = R_tryEval(e, R_GlobalEnv, &errorOccurred);
      if (errorOccurred)
      {
           printf("error occurred in mean\n");
      }

      for (i = 0; i < berValues; i++)
      {
           REAL(bers)[i] = REAL(bers)[i] / REAL(mean)[0];
      }

      *ber = REAL(mean)[0];

      Rf_endEmbeddedR(0);
      UNPROTECT(3);
      return 0;
 }


 And these are the errors from Valgrind output:

 HEAP SUMMARY:
 ==2909==     in use at exit: 18,832,260 bytes in 6,791 blocks
 ==2909==   total heap usage: 21,758 allocs, 14,967 frees, 30,803,476 
 bytes allocated
 ==2909==
 ==2909== 160 (40 direct, 120 indirect) bytes in 1 blocks are definitely 
 lost in loss record 179 of 1,398
 ==2909==    at 0x4028876: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
 ==2909==    by 0x41B364C: nss_parse_service_list (nsswitch.c:626)
 ==2909==    by 0x41B3C59: __nss_database_lookup (nsswitch.c:167)
 ==2909==    by 0x59272F8: ???
 ==2909==    by 0x5928CCC: ???
 ==2909==    by 0x416ABA6: getpwuid_r@@GLIBC_2.1.2 (getXXbyYY_r.c:256)
 ==2909==    by 0x416A4ED: getpwuid (getXXbyYY.c:117)
 ==2909==    by 0x439CCB9: do_fileinfo (platform.c:944)
 ==2909==    by 0x43289ED: bcEval (eval.c:4430)
 ==2909==    by 0x4332CA4: Rf_eval (eval.c:397)
 ==2909==    by 0x43377E0: Rf_applyClosure (eval.c:855)
 ==2909==    by 0x432F17E: bcEval (eval.c:4410)
 ==2909==
 ==2909== 160 (40 direct, 120 indirect) bytes in 1 blocks are definitely 
 lost in loss record 180 of 1,398
 ==2909==    at 0x4028876: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:236)
 ==2909==    by 0x41B364C: nss_parse_service_list (nsswitch.c:626)
 ==2909==    by 0x41B3C59: __nss_database_lookup (nsswitch.c:167)
 ==2909==    by 0x5926148: ???
 ==2909==    by 0x5926F3C: ???
 ==2909==    by 0x41694A6: getgrgid_r@@GLIBC_2.1.2 (getXXbyYY_r.c:256)
 ==2909==    by 0x4168CAD: getgrgid (getXXbyYY.c:117)
 ==2909==    by 0x439CCEB: do_fileinfo (platform.c:947)
 ==2909==    by 0x43289ED: bcEval (eval.c:4430)
 ==2909==    by 0x4332CA4: Rf_eval (eval.c:397)
 ==2909==    by 0x43377E0: Rf_applyClosure (eval.c:855)
 ==2909==    by 0x432F17E: bcEval (eval.c:4410)
 ==2909==
 ==2909== LEAK SUMMARY:
 ==2909==    definitely lost: 80 bytes in 2 blocks
 ==2909==    indirectly lost: 240 bytes in 20 blocks
 ==2909==      possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
 ==2909==    still reachable: 18,831,940 bytes in 6,769 blocks

 Reachable error summary is far too long to include in this mail. The 
 interesting thing is that reachable errors are all caused by this small 
 function.

 Any ideas? I would also appreciate any suggestions on how to improve 
 the R-C integration in my code.

 Thank you in advance,
 Nikos