[R] bug in chdir option of source

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 usenet at s-boehringer.de wrote:

> I apologize for not having investigated enough.
>
> However I want to bring up the point that upgrading can be a very
> tedious thing. I administer a cluster for which upgrading brings it to a
> halt for several hours stopping all calculations going on. At the moment
> I have no way to go from 2.1.0 to 2.1.1.
>
> I just want to add this point to the release policy of R which
> historically has very quick release cycles which on the one hand is a
> very positive thing but on the other hand can be problematic with
> respect to some aspects.

I really don't understand.  Just install the current R in a different 
place and try it.  If it works better, use it for newly-started jobs.
We too run a large cluster (and a few hundred loosely connected machines) 
and are able to upgrade pretty transparently even when long jobs are 
running.

For those who are reluctant to upgrade, I would suggest never installing a 
.0 release (of any software, not just R).

>
> Thanks again, Stefan
>
>
> On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 13:02, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> Please read the posting guide (as we do ask) and use the current version
>> as it asks to see if the `bug' has already been fixed.
>>
>> This was fixed a while ago, definitely in 2.1.1.
>>
>> On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 usenet at s-boehringer.de wrote:
>>
>>> I'm on R 2.1.0.
>>>
>>> In the "source" function there is a bug preventing the proper use of the
>>> chdir option (which simply doesn't work).
>>>
>>> The problem is that in the function the following line occurs:
>>> file <- file(file, "r", encoding = encoding)
>>>
>>> This overwrites the variable "file" and later causes the check
>>>    if (chdir && is.character(file) && (path <- dirname(file)) !=
>>>        ".")
>>> to fail.
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595