[Rd] Crash after (wrongly) applying product operator on S4 object that derives from list

[Michael Lawrence]

I think this is a known issue with Java messing with the stack, see
e.g. http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Error-memory-exhausted-limit-reached-td4729708.html.

I'll fix the infinite recursion caused by the methods package.

Michael

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 1:12 AM, Wolfgang Huber <wolfgang.huber at embl.de> wrote:
> Dear Hilmar
>
> Perhaps this gives an indication of why the infinite recursion happens:
>
> ## after calling `*` on ma and a matrix:
>
>> showMethods(classes=class(ma), includeDefs=TRUE, inherited = TRUE)
>
>
> Function: * (package base)
> e1="FOOCLASS", e2="matrix"
>     (inherited from: e1="vector", e2="structure")
>     (definition from function "Ops")
> function (e1, e2)
> {
>     value <- callGeneric(e1, e2 at .Data)
>     if (length(value) == length(e2)) {
>         e2 at .Data <- value
>         e2
>     }
>     else value
> }
>
>
>
>> is(ma, "vector")
>
> [1] TRUE
>
> I got that in a fresh session of
>>
>> sessionInfo()
>
> R Under development (unstable) (2017-04-18 r72542)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin16.5.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: macOS Sierra 10.12.4
>
> Best wishes
> Wolfgang
>
> 19.4.17 10:01, Hilmar Berger scripsit:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> following up on my own question, I found smaller example that does not
>> require LIMMA:
>>
>> setClass("FOOCLASS",
>>          representation("list")
>> )
>> ma = new("FOOCLASS", list(M=matrix(rnorm(300), 30,10)))
>>
>>> ma * ma$M
>>
>> Error: C stack usage  7970512 is too close to the limit
>>
>>> library(xlsx)
>>
>> Loading required package: rJava
>> Loading required package: xlsxjars
>>>
>>> ma * ma$M
>>
>> ---> Crash
>>
>> xlsx seems to act like a catalyst here, with the product operator
>> running in a deep nested iteration, exhausting the stack. Valgrind shows
>> thousands of invalid stack accesses when loading xslx, which might
>> contribute to the problem. Package xlsx has not been updated since 2014,
>> so it might fail with more current versions of R or Java (I'm using
>> Oracle Java 8).
>>
>> Still, even if xlsx was the package to be blamed for the crash, I fail
>> to understand what exactly the product operator is trying to do in the
>> multiplication of the matrix with the object.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Hilmar
>>
>> On 18/04/17 18:57, Hilmar Berger wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> this is a problem that occurs in the presence of two libraries (limma,
>>> xlsx) and leads to a crash of R. The problematic code is the wrong
>>> application of sweep or the product ("*") function on an LIMMA MAList
>>> object. To my knowledge, limma does not define a "*" method for MAList
>>> objects.
>>>
>>> If only LIMMA is loaded but not package xlsx, the code does not crash
>>> but rather produces an error ("Error: C stack usage  7970512 is too
>>> close to the limit"). Loading only package rJava instead of xlsx does
>>> also not produce the crash but the error message instead. Note that
>>> xlsx functions are not explicitly used.
>>>
>>> It could be reproduced on two different Linux machines running
>>> R-3.2.5, R-3.3.0 and R-3.3.2.
>>>
>>> Code to reproduce the problem:
>>> ---------------------------------
>>> library(limma)
>>> library(xlsx)
>>>
>>> # a MAList
>>> ma = new("MAList", list(A=matrix(rnorm(300), 30,10),
>>> M=matrix(rnorm(300), 30,10)))
>>>
>>> # This should actually be sweep(ma$M, ...) for functional code, but I
>>> omitted the $M...
>>> #sweep(ma, 2, c(1:10), "*")
>>> # sweep will crash when doing the final operation of applying the
>>> function over the input matrix, which in this case is function "*"
>>>
>>> f = match.fun("*")
>>> # This is not exactly the same as in sweep but it also tries to
>>> multiply the MAList object with a matrix of same size and leads to the
>>> crash
>>> f(ma, ma$M)
>>> # ma * ma$M has the same effect
>>> ---------------------------------
>>>
>>> My output:
>>>
>>> R version 3.3.0 (2016-05-03) -- "Supposedly Educational"
>>> Copyright (C) 2016 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
>>> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>>>
>>> R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
>>> You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
>>> Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.
>>>
>>>   Natural language support but running in an English locale
>>>
>>> R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
>>> Type 'contributors()' for more information and
>>> 'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.
>>>
>>> Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
>>> 'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
>>> Type 'q()' to quit R.
>>>
>>> > library(limma)
>>> > library(xlsx)
>>> Loading required package: rJava
>>> Loading required package: xlsxjars
>>> >
>>> > sessionInfo()
>>> R version 3.3.0 (2016-05-03)
>>> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>>> Running under: Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS
>>>
>>> locale:
>>>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8          LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
>>>  [4] LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8        LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8
>>> LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>>>  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8          LC_NAME=en_US.UTF-8
>>> LC_ADDRESS=en_US.UTF-8
>>> [10] LC_TELEPHONE=en_US.UTF-8      LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8
>>> LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_US.UTF-8
>>>
>>> attached base packages:
>>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods base
>>>
>>> other attached packages:
>>> [1] xlsx_0.5.7     xlsxjars_0.6.1 rJava_0.9-8    limma_3.30.7
>>>
>>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>>> [1] tools_3.3.0
>>> >
>>> > ma = new("MAList", list(A=matrix(rnorm(300), 30,10),
>>> M=matrix(rnorm(300), 30,10)))
>>> > #sweep(ma, 2, c(1:10), "*")
>>> >
>>> > f = match.fun("*")
>>> > f
>>> function (e1, e2)  .Primitive("*")
>>>
>>> > f(ma, ma$M)
>>>
>>> ----> crash to command line with segfault.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Hilmar
>>>
>>
>
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