[Rd] Comments in the DESCRIPTION file

[Simon Urbanek]

On Dec 6, 2012, at 8:36 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:

> On 12/06/2012 04:53 PM, William Dunlap wrote:
>> Why not just use some tag that R doesn't already use, say "Comment:", instead
>> of a #?  If you allow # in position one of a line to mean a comment then people
>> may expect # to be used as a comment anywhere on a line.
> 
> I would stick to whatever the DCF spec say, if there is such thing.
> If the spec says # on position 1 means a comment then I think read.dcf()
> should do that. Then the function can be used to read any DCF file,
> not just DESCRIPTION files.
> 

DCF itself doesn't define the meaning of # -- it only defines that no field name is allowed to start with #. In fact the same document says that lines starting with # are not permitted in general DCF files -- they are only permitted in Debian's source package control files. That leaves the status of # as comments somewhat confusing. My interpretation would be that generic DCF doesn't allow # but specific formats derived from DCF may choose to interpret it that way. In either case the current behavior of read.dcf() definitely satisfies the DCF definition. As both Brian and Bill pointed out, the proper way to do that is to define a data field with data/value as the comment.

Cheers,
Simon



> Cheers,
> H.
> 
>> 
>> (It may also mess up some dcf parsing code that I've written - it checks that lines
>> after tagged lines are either empty, the start of a new description, or start with a space,
>> a continuation of the previous line.)
>> 
>> Bill Dunlap
>> Spotfire, TIBCO Software
>> wdunlap tibco.com
>> 
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
>>> Of Hervé Pagès
>>> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2012 3:47 PM
>>> To: Duncan Murdoch
>>> Cc: christophe.genolini at u-paris10.fr; r-devel at r-project.org; Christophe Genolini
>>> Subject: Re: [Rd] Comments in the DESCRIPTION file
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/06/2012 03:41 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> Wouldn't be hard to patch read.dcf() though.
>>>> 
>>>> FWIW here's the "comment aware" version of read.dcf() I've been using
>>>> for years:
>>>> 
>>>>    .removeCommentLines <- function(infile=stdin(), outfile=stdout())
>>>>    {
>>>>      if (is.character(infile)) {
>>>>          infile <- file(infile, "r")
>>>>          on.exit(close(infile))
>>>>      }
>>>>      if (is.character(outfile)) {
>>>>          outfile <- file(outfile, "w")
>>>>          on.exit({close(infile); close(outfile)})
>>>>      }
>>>>      while (TRUE) {
>>>>          lines <- readLines(infile, n=25000L)
>>>>          if (length(lines) == 0L)
>>>>              return()
>>>>          keep_it <- substr(lines, 1L, 1L) != "#"
>>>>          writeLines(lines[keep_it], outfile)
>>>>      }
>>>>    }
>>>> 
>>>>    read.dcf2 <- function(file, ...)
>>>>    {
>>>>      clean_file <- file.path(tempdir(), "clean.dcf")
>>> 
>>> mmh, would certainly be better to just use tempfile() here.
>>> 
>>> H.
>>> 
>>>>      .removeCommentLines(file, clean_file)
>>>>      on.exit(file.remove(clean_file))
>>>>      read.dcf(clean_file, ...)
>>>>    }
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> H.
>>>> 
>>>> On 11/07/2012 01:53 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>>>> On 12-11-07 4:26 AM, Christophe Genolini wrote:
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Is it possible to add comments in the DESCRIPTION file?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> The read.dcf function is used to read the DESCRIPTION file, and it
>>>>> doesn't support comments.  (The current Debian control format
>>>>> description does appear to support comments with leading # markers, but
>>>>> R's read.dcf function doesn't support these.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> You could probably get away with something like
>>>>> 
>>>>> #: this is a comment
>>>>> 
>>>>> since unrecognized fields are ignored, but I think this fact is
>>>>> undocumented so I would say it's safer to assume that comments are not
>>>>> supported.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>> 
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Hervé Pagès
>>> 
>>> Program in Computational Biology
>>> Division of Public Health Sciences
>>> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
>>> 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
>>> P.O. Box 19024
>>> Seattle, WA 98109-1024
>>> 
>>> E-mail: hpages at fhcrc.org
>>> Phone:  (206) 667-5791
>>> Fax:    (206) 667-1319
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> -- 
> Hervé Pagès
> 
> Program in Computational Biology
> Division of Public Health Sciences
> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
> 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
> P.O. Box 19024
> Seattle, WA 98109-1024
> 
> E-mail: hpages at fhcrc.org
> Phone:  (206) 667-5791
> Fax:    (206) 667-1319
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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