[R-SIG-Mac] strange segfault error in R from command-line on Mac laptop

[David Winsemius]

On 9/29/21 11:17 AM, Jeffrey Rosenthal wrote:
> Hello. I often use R from the command-line (i.e. just typing "R") 
> within the "Terminal" application on my MacBook Pro laptop.  And 
> sometimes I get a sudden strange error "*** caught segfault *** 
> address 0x10, cause 'memory not mapped'" (after which R allows me to 
> abort/exit/etc, but not to continue).  It occurs when using the arrow 
> or delete keys (perhaps related to readline?).  After much testing, I 
> have found a very simple reproducible minimal example. Namely, if I 
> start R from the command line, and then type "plot(0)", and then type 
> any character (e.g. "a") and then the delete key, then it always 
> triggers this error.  Does this error occur for anyone else?  Any 
> ideas how to fix it?


I would reinstall XQuartz. The `plot(0)` command changes the focus from 
R to XQuartz, so the processing of the typed letter "a" is being handled 
by that system function rather than by R. On my 3 year-old MacAir 
running R 4.1.0 typing a letter with the system focus on a plot window 
produces a mild error tone, as does typing the delete key. (No crash 
after returning focus to the R process by mouse-clicking in the Terminal 
window.


-- 

David

>
> I know that this problem is quite specific to my Mac laptop set-up; it 
> does not occur on my iMac nor on my friend's Mac.  On the other hand, 
> I did try upgrading R and that did not fix it.  My sessionInfo() 
> output follows.  I am *not* saving R history, nor setting R_SAVEHIST, 
> and I do *not* have any .Rhistory or .Rapp.history file in my 
> directory.  Thank you very much for any suggestions!
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
>> sessionInfo()
>
> R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: macOS Catalina 10.15.7
>
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:
> /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.0/Resources/lib/libRblas.dylib
> LAPACK:
> /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.0/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib 
>
>
> locale:
> [1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.0.2
>
> ------------------------------------------------
>   Jeffrey S. Rosenthal
>   Professor of Statistics, University of Toronto
>   Web site: http://probability.ca/jeff/
>
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