R devel - Jan 2009 - cat cannot write more than 10000 characters? [R 2.8.1]

Hi,

during the examination of a Sweave hang-up inside an odfWeave call (OOo
XMLs have looong lines) I have discovered that my cat function cannot
write more than 10000 characters to a text file. Otherwise, the internal
C code causes a hang-up, which can only be stopped with a quit signal
that terminates the R session. Is this behavior normal?

Code to reproduce this:

testChunk <- paste(rep("a", 10000 + 1), ## delete "+ 1"
to be successful
                   collapse="")
output <- tempfile()
cat(testChunk, sep = "\n", file = output, append = TRUE)

My sessionInfo:

R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
i686-pc-linux-gnu (actually the latest openSuse 11.1)
locale:
LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

On Sun, 4 Jan 2009, Daniel Saban?s Bov? wrote:
> Hi,
>
> during the examination of a Sweave hang-up inside an odfWeave call (OOo
> XMLs have looong lines) I have discovered that my cat function cannot
> write more than 10000 characters to a text file. Otherwise, the internal
You mean on a single line?
> C code causes a hang-up, which can only be stopped with a quit signal
> that terminates the R session. Is this behavior normal?
No, works for me on Mac OS X and x86_64 Fedora 8 (as does 10x larger).
Can you run this under a debugger and find where it is going wrong for 
you?
> Code to reproduce this:
>
> testChunk <- paste(rep("a", 10000 + 1), ## delete "+
1" to be successful
>                   collapse="")
> output <- tempfile()
> cat(testChunk, sep = "\n", file = output, append = TRUE)
We have writeLines() for that and it is more efficient, especially if you 
keep a connection open.
> My sessionInfo:
>
> R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
> i686-pc-linux-gnu (actually the latest openSuse 11.1)
> locale:
>
LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Daniel
-- 
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