[R-sig-ME] Bug report for lme

[Douglas Bates]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Michal Figurski
<figurski at mail.med.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Dear Prof. Bates,

> I'm working with a lmer model using your lme4 library version 0.999375-35
> with R 2.11.1 on Win7 64bit. Shortly after starting the function, the R
> window clears and the following is being displayed:
>
> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,

... Hundreds of lines deleted

> REML = TRUE,  verbose = 0L)
>  4: do.call(lmer_finalize, ans)
>  5: lmer(formula(paste(i1, "~SPL + (SPL|Plate:Aliq)-1")), data = a)
> Error in mer_finalize(ans) : caught access violation - continue with care
>>

> OK, so I updated R and lme4 to the latest versions, and now R just plainly
> crashes without any message. Let me know if you need additional information
> to troubleshoot.

Well, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lines of (part of)  a dump of an
object are unlikely to be helpful.

To get R working again you probably need to delete the file .RData in
the default directory in which you start R.  It is most likely that
you have a corrupt object in the saved worksheet.

Secondly, using paste to create a formula is not a great idea.  The
formula may have ended up being unevaluated.  If you really do need to
use a character string to name the response variable the preferred
approach is

form <- substitute(foo ~ SPL + (SPL | Plate:Aliq) - 1, list(foo = as.name(i1)))
lmer(form, data=a)

If those suggestions don't help then please provide a reproducible
example and preferrably on less than a gigantic data set.

I am taking the liberty of cc:ing the R-SIG-Mixed-Models at R-project.org
mailing list on this reply.  Many of those who read the list may be
able to help you and it is unlikely I will be able to give much
assistance soon because I am travelling for the next 10 days.