It is already fixed, in three steps:
R-2.12.0:
? model.frame had an unstated 500 byte limit on variable names.
(Example reported by Terry Therneau.)
R-patched:
? The data.frame method of format failed if a column name was
longer than 256 bytes (the maximum length allowed for an R name).
R-devel:
? The previously almost undocumented limit of 256 bytes on a symbol
name has been raised to 10,000 bytes (a sanity check). Long
symbol names can sometimes occur when deparsing expressions (for
example, in model.frame).
On Wed, 3 Nov 2010, Terry Therneau wrote:
> A few weeks ago I reported a problem with model.frame, whose root lay
> in a formula expression "....+ ratetable(x1=x1, x2=x2,
....x100=x100)"
> that was really long and caused model.frame to fail. Brian had some
> indefinite ideas on what might need to change in the base code to handle
> it.
>
> In survival_2.36-1 the bit of code that generated the offending
> expression has been changed (mostly for other reasons). The problem
> case in question no longer is generated. If fixing this issue was on
> anyone's list of things to do, feel free to drop the priority to zero.
> (You could still generate this with just exactly the right call to
> pyears, but I'll be boarding up that final door in 2.36-2.)
>
> Terry Therneau
>
>
--
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