R help - Sep 2011 - Problem using SNOW with data frame as a function argument

Hello

I would like to use SNOW to parallelise some computations to be made on columns
of a data frame, using different parameter values for each SNOW
"worker".

I gather(?) clusterMap() is the appropriate SNOW function to do something like
this.  I suspect the problem lies in the fact that I am only supplying one data
frame argument for the flow.dat function argument yet the a, b, and x arguments
have ten values each.  I tried with RECYCLE=TRUE but still didn't work.

I have generated some example data below that illustrates my problem.

#example input data frames
mydat <- data.frame(a.in=1:10,b.in=1:10,x.in=1:10)
flow.dat <- data.frame(ww=100:105,zz=600:605)

 #define the function
myfun<- function(a,b,x,flow.dat){
+ ee <- a+b+x
+ ff<- mean(flow.dat[,1])
+ return(ff)
+ }
 #apply the function as per normal
print(myfun(a=mydat$a.in,
+ b=mydat$b.in,
+ x=mydat$x.in,
+ flow.dat=flow.dat))
[1] 102.5
#works OK, average of column one of data frame looks good
#a,b and x parameters read in OK , ee gets calculated but not returned

 #now try to apply the function in parallel via SNOW
cl <- makeCluster(3,type="SOCK")  #make a cluster
ll <- clusterMap(cl,fun=myfun,
+ a=mydat$a.in,
+ b=mydat$b.in,
+ x=mydat$x.in,
+ flow.dat=flow.dat)
>Error in checkForRemoteErrors(val) :
  10 nodes produced errors; first error: incorrect number of dimensions
 stopCluster(cl)


_______________________________________________________
Here is system info
> Sys.info()
                     sysname                      release                     
version                     nodename
                   "Windows"            "Server 2008 x64"
"build 7601, Service Pack 1"             "POWERAPP4-WRON"
                     machine                        login                       
user
                    "x86-64"                     "xxxxxx"   
"xxxxxx"

$version.string
[1] "R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16)"

Paul Rustomji
Research Scientist
CSIRO Land and Water
Australia




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