R help - Jan 2011 - exit and save data from the terminal where command is frozen

Hello,

Is there any way to stop an R execution in a terminal where the previous command
appears to have caused the code to hang? I basically need to get back to the
prompt.

Note that control-c doesn't restore the prompt and running top -o cpu from
another terminal shows R at >99% CPU usage. While closing the terminal would
work, I'd really like to save the data and the history file if I can. Is the
temporary history list and/or variables from the current session located
somewhere on my machine that I could get to and save before closing the
terminal? Or is this a lost cause?

Thanks,
-Brian

On 01/01/2011 3:42 PM, Brian Kidd wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is there any way to stop an R execution in a terminal where the previous
command appears to have caused the code to hang? I basically need to get back to
the prompt.
>
> Note that control-c doesn't restore the prompt and running top -o cpu
from another terminal shows R at>99% CPU usage. While closing the terminal
would work, I'd really like to save the data and the history file if I can.
Is the temporary history list and/or variables from the current session located
somewhere on my machine that I could get to and save before closing the
terminal? Or is this a lost cause?

There's probably no way if Ctrl-C doesn't work.

You might be able to attach gdb to the process and see what's going on 
in there, but that's not too likely to be successful.

Next time it would be a good idea to save results on a regular basis so 
that you can restart from a more recent save point.

Duncan Murdoch