R devel - May 2008 - Have you ever experienced this problem with REAL in a C code

Dear all,

I'm currently experiencing big troubles with my C code called by .Call 
in a R function.

I know this may not be the right place for such things but these errors 
are driving me crazy. And I hope other people may have already 
experienced these problems so that they could give me good suggestions.
Sorry if I'm completely out of topic.

Well let's go...

I'm writing a MCMC algo for Bayesian analysis. The MCMC part is written 
in C but call R objects (e.g. output and arguments are SEXP). The C is 
called by a wrapper R function through .Call. The posterior density is 
computed using a R code that calls 2 different codes: one for the prior 
distribution and one for the likelihood. The prior distribution is fully 
written in R while the likelihood is computed using a C code. Both of 
these codes are (seem to be) ok and *always* return numeric - and no 
special values as Inf, NA,...

When I'm running my codes (enclosed you'll find the C code), I get one 
of the following error - *when error occurs*:

Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord = 
locations,  :
  REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not a 'raw'

or

Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord = 
locations,  :
  REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not a 'list'

or

Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord = 
locations,  :
  REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not an 'integer'

The problem is that REAL seems not to be applied to a list (I've got no 
list objects), and not to an integer too.
I checked for wrong allocation memory, infinite values but found nothing...

Any suggestions for possible reasons would be definitively appreciated.
Again, if this mail has no reason to be in this list; sorry and forget it.
Best,
Mathieu

-- 
Institute of Mathematics
Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne
STAT-IMA-FSB-EPFL, Station 8
CH-1015 Lausanne   Switzerland
http://stat.epfl.ch/
Tel: + 41 (0)21 693 7907

These messages mean that R's internal code is encountering the wrong 
SEXPTYPE.  This almost always means one of

- lact of PROTECTion, so objects have been garbage-collected before use.

- memory corruption, most often by writing outside array bounds.

See the chapter in 'Writing R Extensions' about this,  and if possible 
make use of valgrind.


On Fri, 9 May 2008, Mathieu Ribatet wrote:
>   Dear all,
>
> I'm currently experiencing big troubles with my C code called by .Call
in a R
> function.
>
> I know this may not be the right place for such things but these errors are
> driving me crazy. And I hope other people may have already experienced
these
> problems so that they could give me good suggestions.
> Sorry if I'm completely out of topic.
>
> Well let's go...
>
> I'm writing a MCMC algo for Bayesian analysis. The MCMC part is written
in C
> but call R objects (e.g. output and arguments are SEXP). The C is called by
a
> wrapper R function through .Call. The posterior density is computed using a
R
> code that calls 2 different codes: one for the prior distribution and one
for
> the likelihood. The prior distribution is fully written in R while the 
> likelihood is computed using a C code. Both of these codes are (seem to be)
> ok and *always* return numeric - and no special values as Inf, NA,...
>
> When I'm running my codes (enclosed you'll find the C code), I get
one of the
> following error - *when error occurs*:
>
> Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord
= locations,
> :
> REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not a 'raw'
>
> or
>
> Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord
= locations,
> :
> REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not a 'list'
>
> or
>
> Error in gibbs(1000, init, prior.p, "whitmat", data = ms1, coord
= locations,
> :
> REAL() can only be applied to a 'numeric', not an 'integer'
>
> The problem is that REAL seems not to be applied to a list (I've got no
list
> objects), and not to an integer too.
> I checked for wrong allocation memory, infinite values but found nothing...
>
> Any suggestions for possible reasons would be definitively appreciated.
> Again, if this mail has no reason to be in this list; sorry and forget it.
> Best,
> Mathieu
>
> -- 
> Institute of Mathematics
> Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne
> STAT-IMA-FSB-EPFL, Station 8
> CH-1015 Lausanne   Switzerland
> http://stat.epfl.ch/
> Tel: + 41 (0)21 693 7907
>
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595