[R] bug in chdir option of source

[Duncan Murdoch]

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.

One simple solution is to test on a different system (e.g. a standalone 
one).  If the bug is present in 2.1.0 there but absent on 2.1.1, it's 
probably fixed on your cluster, too.

Another option which may or may not work is just to read the NEWS file 
for the newer releases.  It's not always obvious that a bug fix there 
fixes your own problem, but sometimes it is.
> 
> 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.

It's hard to decide which versions to install.  On the one hand, if 
installs are difficult, you want to do it infrequently -- so maybe skip 
all the x.y.0 releases.  On the other hand, if you have unusual 
hardware, you are likely to see bugs that others don't see -- so 
installing the betas and the .0 releases will help to get your bugs fixed.

This is why it's useful to have two systems, one for "production", one 
for testing.  Then you can follow both policies.

Duncan Murdoch
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
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