R devel - Nov 2017 - Are Rprintf and REprintf thread-safe?

Is it safe to call Rprintf and REprintf from a background thread? I'm
working on a package that makes calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) on a
background thread when errors happen, but when I run R CMD check, it
says:

  Compiled code should not call entry points which might terminate R nor
  write to stdout/stderr instead of to the console, nor the system RNG.

Is it safe to replace these calls with REprintf()?

-Winston

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Winston Chang wrote:
> Is it safe to call Rprintf and REprintf from a background thread? I'm
> working on a package that makes calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) on a
> background thread when errors happen, but when I run R CMD check, it
> says:
>
>  Compiled code should not call entry points which might terminate R nor
>  write to stdout/stderr instead of to the console, nor the system RNG.
>
> Is it safe to replace these calls with REprintf()?
Only if you enjoy race conditions or segfaults.

Rprintf and REprintf are not thread-safe.

Best,

luke

>
> -Winston
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
Luke Tierney
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney at uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu

Thanks - I'll find another way to send messages to the main thread for
printing.

-Winston

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 12:42 PM,  <luke-tierney at uiowa.edu>
wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Winston Chang wrote:
>
>> Is it safe to call Rprintf and REprintf from a background thread?
I'm
>> working on a package that makes calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) on a
>> background thread when errors happen, but when I run R CMD check, it
>> says:
>>
>>  Compiled code should not call entry points which might terminate R nor
>>  write to stdout/stderr instead of to the console, nor the system RNG.
>>
>> Is it safe to replace these calls with REprintf()?
>
>
> Only if you enjoy race conditions or segfaults.
>
> Rprintf and REprintf are not thread-safe.
>
> Best,
>
> luke
>
>
>>
>> -Winston
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
> --
> Luke Tierney
> Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
> University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
> Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
>    Actuarial Science
> 241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney at uiowa.edu
> Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu