[Rd] Problem with adding slots to S4 object

[Thierry Onkelinx]

Dear all,

I did some more work in this.

- put all the metadata in a dedicated subclass (see metadataclass branch in
github repository). This doesn't solve the problem.
- test the code under R 3.1.2. This gives the same problem. So this is NOT
a bug introduced by R 3.2.0 :-)
- Profiling the code. Below the summary (code is on GitHub). It seems like
most of the time is spent by paste(). Note that my code doesn't use paste()
so it used in the internals of R. Could someone with more understanding of
S4 enlight me on what is happening. And on what I am doing wrong?

Best regards,

Thierry

$by.self
                        self.time self.pct total.time total.pct
"paste"                    166.06    90.98     170.54     93.44
".findInheritedMethods"      9.30     5.10     182.38     99.92
"rep.int"                    2.24     1.23       4.48      2.45
":"                          2.24     1.23       2.24      1.23
"unique.default"             1.42     0.78       1.42      0.78
"match"                      0.58     0.32       0.58      0.32
"[["                         0.54     0.30       0.54      0.30
".getClassFromCache"         0.08     0.04       0.08      0.04
"loadMethod"                 0.06     0.03       0.06      0.03

$by.total
                           total.time total.pct self.time self.pct
"eval"                         182.52    100.00      0.00     0.00
"my_lmer"                      182.52    100.00      0.00     0.00
"source"                       182.52    100.00      0.00     0.00
"standardGeneric"              182.52    100.00      0.00     0.00
"withVisible"                  182.52    100.00      0.00     0.00
".findInheritedMethods"        182.38     99.92      9.30     5.10
"<Anonymous>"                  182.38     99.92      0.00     0.00
"paste"                        170.54     93.44    166.06    90.98
"outerLabels"                  170.54     93.44      0.00     0.00
"rep.int"                        4.48      2.45      2.24     1.23
":"                              2.24      1.23      2.24     1.23
"unique.default"                 1.42      0.78      1.42     0.78
"unique"                         1.42      0.78      0.00     0.00
"match"                          0.58      0.32      0.58     0.32
"[["                             0.54      0.30      0.54     0.30
".inheritedArgsExpression"       0.54      0.30      0.00     0.00
"extends"                        0.54      0.30      0.00     0.00
".getClassFromCache"             0.08      0.04      0.08     0.04
"getClassDef"                    0.08      0.04      0.00     0.00
"initialize"                     0.08      0.04      0.00     0.00
"new"                            0.08      0.04      0.00     0.00
"loadMethod"                     0.06      0.03      0.06     0.03

$sample.interval
[1] 0.02

$sampling.time
[1] 182.52

>

ir. Thierry Onkelinx
Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and
Forest
team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality Assurance
Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Anderlecht
Belgium

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say
what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
~ John Tukey

2015-05-04 17:10 GMT+02:00 Thierry Onkelinx <thierry.onkelinx at inbo.be>:

> Dear all,
>
> I'm trying to create a virtual S4 class with some subclasses. I noticed
> that adding slots to this class increases the memory use and slows the
> functions down. Note that I'm adding very small slots (integer or character
> both of length 1).
>
> I've made a reproducible example at
> https://github.com/ThierryO/testvirtualclass. The R CMD check --as-cran
> fails on the tests.
>
> Some of the output of R CMD check
>
> * using R version 3.2.0 (2015-04-16)
> * using platform: i386-w64-mingw32 (32-bit)
> * using session charset: ISO8859-1
> * using option '--as-cran'
> * checking tests ...
>   Running 'testthat.R' [125s]
>  ERROR
> Running the tests in 'tests/testthat.R' failed.
> Last 13 lines of output:
>   Execution halted
>   Error: C stack usage  16583636 is too close to the limit
>
> at that point R crashes and uses about 3.7 GB RAM
>
> Any ideas on what is going wrong? Am I using the virual classes in the
> wrong way?
>
> Best regards,
>
> ir. Thierry Onkelinx
> Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and
> Forest
> team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality Assurance
> Kliniekstraat 25
> 1070 Anderlecht
> Belgium
>
> To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
> than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say
> what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
> The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner
> The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
> ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
> ~ John Tukey
>

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