R help - Jul 2008 - Rf_error crashes entire program.

I'm having a problem with the error and warning functions.  I've tried
this
on multiple machine so I'm fairly sure it's not machine dependent and
I've
tried it on the latest versions 2.6.0-2.7.1.  Whenever my program gets to an
error or warning it crashes the entire program rather than throwing the
error like it should.

Here are the relevant bits.

...
    char const * const ExeedsMinVarianceError = "PFDA ERR: Near zero
variance encountered.  Estimation Unstable. Terminating Estimation.";
....
       
if(debug){printf("Da:\n");printmat(DaOld,1,*ka);fflush(stdout);}
        daxpy_(ka, &mOne, Da, &one, DaOld, &one);
        for(i=0;i<*ka;i++)convergenceCriteria+=fabs(DaOld[i]);
        if(Da[*ka] < MinVariance){
            printf("PING");fflush(stdout);
            warning(ExeedsMinVarianceError);
            break;
        }

and the output from running in batch mode that I get is this:
Da:
0.1803    4.988e-017

PING
and here the program crashes.   I've tried this in multiple places and
sometimes the error is thrown sometimes not.  Does anyone have an idea of
what is going on.  I could not find any discussion of this error yet.
Thank you,
Andrew Redd

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 28/07/2008 6:41 PM, Andrew Redd wrote:
> I'm having a problem with the error and warning functions.  I've
tried this
> on multiple machine so I'm fairly sure it's not machine dependent
and I've
> tried it on the latest versions 2.6.0-2.7.1.  Whenever my program gets to
an
> error or warning it crashes the entire program rather than throwing the
> error like it should.
> 
> Here are the relevant bits.
> 
> ...
>     char const * const ExeedsMinVarianceError = "PFDA ERR: Near zero
> variance encountered.  Estimation Unstable. Terminating Estimation.";
> ....
>        
if(debug){printf("Da:\n");printmat(DaOld,1,*ka);fflush(stdout);}
>         daxpy_(ka, &mOne, Da, &one, DaOld, &one);
>         for(i=0;i<*ka;i++)convergenceCriteria+=fabs(DaOld[i]);
>         if(Da[*ka] < MinVariance){
>             printf("PING");fflush(stdout);
>             warning(ExeedsMinVarianceError);
>             break;
>         }
> 
> and the output from running in batch mode that I get is this:
> Da:
> 0.1803    4.988e-017
> 
> PING
> and here the program crashes.   I've tried this in multiple places and
> sometimes the error is thrown sometimes not.  Does anyone have an idea of
> what is going on.  I could not find any discussion of this error yet.
I don't know if this would have any effect, but we normally suggest that 
you use Rprintf, not printf.

If that's not relevant, you probably need to give more details:  show us 
a complete file that does nothing but crash, let us know your platform, 
etc.  Without reproducible code it's nearly impossible for us to 
diagnose errors, and often producing the reproducible code is enough to 
suggest to you what the problem is without any extra help.

Duncan Murdoch

Rf_error is used so often in R itself and packages that it is almost 
certainly not the problem -- rather something else your program has done 
has damaged R's internals (e.g. overrrun an array).

'Writing R Extensions' discusses how to debug R code, including foreign 
code.  For example, I would run under valgrind to look for incorrect 
memory accesses.

This was an appropriate topic for R-devel -- please DO study the posting 
guide.

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Andrew Redd wrote:
> I'm having a problem with the error and warning functions.  I've
tried this
> on multiple machine so I'm fairly sure it's not machine dependent
and I've
> tried it on the latest versions 2.6.0-2.7.1.  Whenever my program gets to
an
> error or warning it crashes the entire program rather than throwing the
> error like it should.
>
> Here are the relevant bits.
>
> ...
>    char const * const ExeedsMinVarianceError = "PFDA ERR: Near zero
> variance encountered.  Estimation Unstable. Terminating Estimation.";
> ....
>       
if(debug){printf("Da:\n");printmat(DaOld,1,*ka);fflush(stdout);}
>        daxpy_(ka, &mOne, Da, &one, DaOld, &one);
>        for(i=0;i<*ka;i++)convergenceCriteria+=fabs(DaOld[i]);
>        if(Da[*ka] < MinVariance){
>            printf("PING");fflush(stdout);
>            warning(ExeedsMinVarianceError);
>            break;
>        }
>
> and the output from running in batch mode that I get is this:
> Da:
> 0.1803    4.988e-017
>
> PING
> and here the program crashes.   I've tried this in multiple places and
> sometimes the error is thrown sometimes not.  Does anyone have an idea of
> what is going on.  I could not find any discussion of this error yet.
> Thank you,
> Andrew Redd
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
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> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
-- 
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