[R] Comments disappearing from local functions (R 2.14.0)

Patrick Connolly p_connolly at slingshot.co.nz
Thu Nov 24 20:09:21 CET 2011


On Mon, 21-Nov-2011 at 09:46PM +1300, Rolf Turner wrote:

[....]

|> It *doesn't* happen to me.  Ergo it would appear to be peculiar
|> to your particular set-up.
|> 
|> What does options()$keep.source say?  (Mine says "TRUE".)
|> 

Same here in both cases.


|> 
|> P. S.:
|> 
|> > sessionInfo()
|> R version 2.14.0 (2011-10-31)
|> Platform: i686-pc-linux-gnu (32-bit)
|> 
|> locale:
|>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
|>  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
|>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
|>  [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C
|>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
|> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

Both the same except the Kubuntu one is 
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)


|> 
|> attached base packages:
|> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
|> 
|> other attached packages:
|> [1] misc_0.0-15

attached base packages:
[1] splines   grDevices utils     stats     graphics  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] multicore_0.1-7  gbm_1.6-3.1      survival_2.36-10 lattice_0.20-0  

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_2.14.0  tools_2.14.0
> 

With the one using multicore, I get a strange error that didn't occur
with R-2.13.1.  A function which runs on 7 cores produces a swag of
PDF files and then returns a list of information.  New to the 2.14.0
is an error like this:

"Error in dev.off() : internal error in PDF_endpage\n"

>From what I can work out, that is a C message and tricky to trace.
However, if I use a postscript device instead of PDF, it works fine.
It's a simple matter to convert a postscript file to pdf, so that's
easy to deal with.  It's impossible to make a toy example of the
problem which doesn't appear when run on a single core.  Maybe if I
knew exactly where the problem arises I could make a toy example but
it's rather a lot of code I'm dealing with.  The fact that the two
problems I'm encountering did not occur with earlier versions makes me
less suspicious of my own code.


My main question is: Can I redo the updating of the packages with
checkBuilt to downgrade them back to the previous version?  Something
is not right with either of my installations and I'd like to revert.

The problem with the disappearing comments occurs when I wish to
attach to another directory.  I commonly reuse functions from previous
years and modify them for the current year.  

If my pwd is, say ~/thisYear, I'll do something like 
attach("~/lastYear/.RData")

If I then edit the function of interest, when it's saved I have the
appropriate version in ~/thisYear/.RData which I find a convenient way
to work.  If the comments aren't there, it's far less usable.  If I
can go back to R-2.13.1 I can still work that way.


TIA

-- 
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.   
   ___    Patrick Connolly   
 {~._.~}                   Great minds discuss ideas    
 _( Y )_  	         Average minds discuss events 
(:_~*~_:)                  Small minds discuss people  
 (_)-(_)  	                      ..... Eleanor Roosevelt
	  
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.



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