R devel - Feb 2010 - R crashes when setWinProgressBar is give a numeric value for label argument

This problem can be seen by the following commands:
> pb <- winProgressBar(max=1000, label='0')
> b <- 1
> setWinProgressBar(pb, b, label=b)
This set of commands (on windows of course, XP in this case) causes R to crash.

This is not strictly a bug since the documentation states that the label
argument should be a character string and using as.character(b) does work
properly.  But when I (and possibly others) forget this and use something like
the above, having the whole R process crash seems a bit extreme.

Possible responses:

1. ignore this and hope that after being punished for not remembering the
correct syntax enough times I will eventually learn to do the correct thing.

2. add a check and generate an error if title or lab is not a character string
(less severe punishment, I may learn eventually, but maybe not as quick).

3. add label <- as.character(label) and same idea for title, so that the
above code works without the user needing to remember the as.character.  This
may need a check for NULL values as well.

4.  Something else that I have not thought of.

Number 1 would be easiest for R core, hardest on me.  Numbers 2 and 3 have the
potential drawback of slowing things down slightly.

My sessionInfo()
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.10.1 Patched (2010-02-08 r51108) 
i386-pc-mingw32 

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.10.1
>
Same thing happens in non-patched 2.10.1

Thanks,



-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

Greg,

winProgressBar() has internal checks for the argument types, and for 
some unaccounted-for reason I omitted them in setWinProgressBar().  So 
2) is easy (cut-and-paste).

I am less sure that we should add coercion, and sure that if we add it 
to setWinProgressBar() we should also add it to winProgressBar().  But 
as you suggested it, I've done so.

Thanks for the report.

Brian Ripely

On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Greg Snow wrote:
> This problem can be seen by the following commands:
>
>> pb <- winProgressBar(max=1000, label='0')
>> b <- 1
>> setWinProgressBar(pb, b, label=b)
>
> This set of commands (on windows of course, XP in this case) causes R to
crash.
>
> This is not strictly a bug since the documentation states that the label
argument should be a character string and using as.character(b) does work
properly.  But when I (and possibly others) forget this and use something like
the above, having the whole R process crash seems a bit extreme.
>
> Possible responses:
>
> 1. ignore this and hope that after being punished for not remembering the
correct syntax enough times I will eventually learn to do the correct thing.
>
> 2. add a check and generate an error if title or lab is not a character
string (less severe punishment, I may learn eventually, but maybe not as quick).
>
> 3. add label <- as.character(label) and same idea for title, so that the
above code works without the user needing to remember the as.character.  This
may need a check for NULL values as well.
>
> 4.  Something else that I have not thought of.
>
> Number 1 would be easiest for R core, hardest on me.  Numbers 2 and 3 have
the potential drawback of slowing things down slightly.
>
> My sessionInfo()
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.10.1 Patched (2010-02-08 r51108)
> i386-pc-mingw32
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
> [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_2.10.1
>>
>
> Same thing happens in non-patched 2.10.1
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> -- 
> Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
> Statistical Data Center
> Intermountain Healthcare
> greg.snow at imail.org
> 801.408.8111
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
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