R help - Mar 2012 - Timer on a function

Hello,

I have a program that consists of a loop fitting a function over many models. 
Sometimes the fitting on a particular model takes minutes to converge.  Is there
a way that I can limit the amount of time that R spends on a given model:

say if my line is:

fittingFunction( func, model.1)

can I have some function:

stopIfUnderTime(  fittingFunction( func, model.1) , 5 )

where stopIfUnderTime will return the result if it finishes under 5 seconds, or
NA otherwise.

Is there anything like this?  (just looked through the web but did not find
anything)

Thanks,
Ramiro



	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Ramiro Barrantes
<ramiro at precisionbioassay.com> wrote:
> ? ?Hello,
>
> I have a program that consists of a loop fitting a function over many
models. ?Sometimes the fitting on a particular model takes minutes to converge.
?Is there a way that I can limit the amount of time that R spends on a given
model:
AFAIK, no -- this is an OS level issue.

Of course, most iterative fitting procedures have controls for the
number of iterations, convergence criteria, etc. , but there is no
awareness of timing except when the OS is interrogated, e.g. by
?proc.time or ?system.time . Such calls would have to be built into
the fitting function or OS level services would have to be invoked to
run the R process with timing limitations built in. See e.g. ?Rscript
for one possible approach.

Corrections or clever tricks to get around these perceived limitations
welcomed, of course.

-- Bert

Cheers,
Bert
>
> say if my line is:
>
> fittingFunction( func, model.1)
>
> can I have some function:
>
> stopIfUnderTime( ?fittingFunction( func, model.1) , 5 )
>
> where stopIfUnderTime will return the result if it finishes under 5
seconds, or NA otherwise.
>
> Is there anything like this? ?(just looked through the web but did not find
anything)
>
> Thanks,
> Ramiro
>
>
>
> ? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:
http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm

Ramiro Barrantes <ramiro <at> precisionbioassay.com> writes:
> I have a program that consists of a loop fitting a function
>  over many models.  Sometimes the fitting on a
> particular model takes minutes to converge.  Is there a way that 
> I can limit the amount of time that R spends
> on a given model:
  Have you looked at ?setTimeLimit ... ??
  I did apropos("time") to see what might be useful ...