[R-pkg-devel] Unexpected symbol when checking package examples

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 11/11/2018 7:01 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 11/11/2018 6:53 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 11/11/2018 3:39 PM, Jared Knowles wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>> I have a bit of a weird issue when I'm trying to check my package merTools
>>> (source repo available here: https://github.com/jknowles/merTools
>>>
>>> On Windows and Linux builds for R-release and R-devel, when R CMD CHECK
>>> checks examples, it returns the following error below:
>>>
>>> Warning: parse error in file 'merTools-Ex.R':
>>> 1: unexpected symbol
>>> 117: cleanEx()
>>> 118: nameEx
>>
>> I also get this error on MacOS.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Upon inspecting the example file generated by R CMD CHECK (mertools-Ex.R) -
>>> it contains only valid R code. I can run it line by line or source the
>>> whole file in R without any errors. But, during the check process, this
>>> error occurs.
>>
>> The problem is in the REimpact help file.  It contains this:
>>
>> zed3 <- REimpact(g1, newdata = InstEval[9:12, ], groupFctr = "d", breaks
>> = 5,
>>
>> and there's no closing paren.
>>
>> This is in a \donttest section of the examples, so it gets deleted when
>> running the examples, and that's the version of merTools-Ex.R that is
>> left at the end.  But the warning happened in a different test,
>>
>> * checking for unstated dependencies in examples ... WARNING
>> Warning: parse error in file 'merTools-Ex.R':
>> 1: unexpected symbol
>> 118: cleanEx()
>> 119: nameEx
>>         ^
>>
>> and it is based on a different version of that file that doesn't omit
>> the \donttest section.
>>
>> This is arguably an R bug:  the line numbers are misleading, since they
>> refer to a version of the file that no longer exists.  Perhaps when you
>> say \donttest, no tests should be done.
> 
> Cancel that last sentence:  if you run "example(REimpact)", you get a
> syntax error message, because \donttest is not the same as \dontrun.  So
> this has to be fixed in the original file.
> 
> But the first part is still right:  you shouldn't say the problem is on
> line 119 of 'merTools-Ex.R', and then rewrite the file so that line
> isn't there any more.

I have submitted a bug report 
(https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=17501) about this.

Duncan Murdoch