[Rd] Assistance much appreciated

[Michael Felt]

I have been struggling with this error message - and think I finally 
understand it's context.

Start

Line by line debugging shows me the function works:

...
 > saveRDS(val, mapfile)
 > val
$variables
$variables$IANA_HTTP_status_code_db
[1]    0 1256

$variables$IANA_URI_scheme_db
[1] 1256 3458

$variables$table_of_HTTP_status_codes
[1] 4714  830


$references
named list()

$compressed
[1] TRUE

 > mapfile
[1] "./library/tools/R/sysdata.rdx"
 > [1] + Stopped (SIGTSTP)         R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL LC_ALL=C 
./bin/R --vanilla
root at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]ls -l ./library/tools/R/sysdata.rdx
-rw-r--r--   1 root     33              193 Dec 17 16:49 
./library/tools/R/sysdata.rdx
root at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]cat ./library/tools/R/sysdata.rdx
àb```b`fbf" SH0#h^°<°¼@ðAlÞ&_(
                               ¨Ü(RËÈÀÂÀ        ¤YósS
C7ÈPG3@Áøj/D                                        °aA 
OG?ÇxøâÄÒâøäüÔø$¨¼X>4È3¾89#5IFª$1)'5>?
ì00F¹³,±(dA1T«(5-µ(5/![PZ\2í$Ú<root at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]
root at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]
root at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]gzip -dc ./library/tools/R/sysdata.rdx
X
j>      names   IANA_HTTP_status_code_db IANA_URI_scheme_db      
table_of_HTTP_status_codesþÿþ
ÿ               variables
references
compressedþroot at x065:[/data/prj/cran/64/R-3.2.3]fg
  R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL LC_ALL=C ./bin/R --vanilla

 >
 > e
<environment: 110dbf620>
 > destDir
[1] "./library/tools/R"
 > compress
[1] TRUE
 > debug(tools:::makeLazyLoadDB(e, file.path(destDir, "sysdata"), 
compress = compress))
Error: Line starting 'Package: tools ...' is malformed!
 > tools:::makeLazyLoadDB(e, file.path(destDir, "sysdata"), compress = 
compress)
Error: Line starting 'Package: tools ...' is malformed!
 >

So, at the end - my gut-feeling is that the error messages is not about 
the arguments, but us related to the "tools:::foo".

Where should I look next? It goes a bit beyond me to know where in R 
"tools:::foo" is being parsed.
Guessing here - but might be related to the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit 
AND that PowerPC is BigEndian rather than LittleEndian? Could also be 
absolutely wrong, way off base, etc. --> shoot me down!

Thanks,
Michael