R help - Jan 2015 - "Negative length vectors are not allowed" error

Hi all, I have a question concerning an error that occurs when using the
inspect() function on a set of rules made by the apriori function from the
arules package. I have a dataset with 12 million records. It contains some basic
sales information (such as product, customer data). I want to use the apriori
function from the arules package on it: ruleset <- apriori(sales,
parameter=list(support=0.0005, confidence=0.1, minlen=2))It gives me 780379
rules. I want to have that much rules on purpose, so hence the parameters being
so low (I guess you can reproduce this problem with any large dataset and low
settings for support and confidence). But then I want to check out the rules
with inspect. It has a subset because I'm only interested in rules with the
attribute Product in the rhs. inspect(subset(ruleset, subset=rhs %pin%
"Product="))Then this error occurs: Error in
inspect(subset(sales3ruleset, subset = rhs %pin% "Product=")) :
  error in evaluating the argument 'x' in selecting a method for
function 'inspect': Error in .Call("R_or_ngCMatrix", x at
data, y at data, PACKAGE = "arules") :
  negative length vectors are not allowedI looked around and apparently that
part about "negative length vectors are not allowed" means that you
want to create a vector that is larger than 2^31. How can you get around this
limit? Or how can I make the inspectfunction work in this case?Thanks in
advance!Kim
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> Hi all, I have a question concerning an error that occurs when using the
inspect() function on a set of rules made by the apriori function from the
arules package. I have a dataset with 12 million records. It contains some basic
sales information (such as product, customer data). I want to use the apriori
function from the arules package on it: ruleset <- apriori(sales,
parameter=list(support=0.0005, confidence=0.1, minlen=2))It gives me 780379
rules. I want to have that much rules on purpose, so hence the parameters being
so low (I guess you can reproduce this problem with any large dataset and low
settings for support and confidence). But then I want to check out the rules
with inspect. It has a subset because I'm only interested in rules with the
attribute Product in the rhs. inspect(subset(ruleset, subset=rhs %pin%
"Product="))Then this error occurs: Error in
inspect(subset(sales3ruleset, subset = rhs %pin% "Product=")) :
>   error in evaluating the argument 'x' in selecting a method for
function 'inspect': Error in .Call("R_or_ngCMatrix", x at
data, y at data, PACKAGE = "arules") :
>   negative length vectors are not allowedI looked around and apparently
that part about "negative length vectors are not allowed" means that
you want to create a vector that is larger than 2^31. How can you get around
this limit? Or how can I make the inspectfunction work in this case?Thanks in
advance!Kim
Dear Kim,

if you learned to post (i.e. write that e-mail) in plain text,
the above would look more humane..

Still, I was able to decipher it and you are right in that
you hit a limitation of the current setup which may well
be linked to the Matrix package which I maintain, and on which
'arules' depends.

Can you please try to find a reproducible example [with randomly
generated data; i.e., you'd use  set.seed(),  runif(), rpois(),
rmultinom(), rnorm(),  ...] so we,
the maintainer of 'arules' Michael Hahsler (BCC'ed: use 
maintainer("arules") to find such an e-mail address),
and myself can look if and how that limitation might be lifted.

Best regards,
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

<br>If the email is still unreadable, please look at the attachment
email.txt.&nbsp;<br>Dear Martin,<br><br>Thanks for your
fast reply. Sorry about the formatting of the previous email. I actually tested
it before sending and it came fine when sending to my own account but when I
send it to the r-help email address it seemed like the formatting got
lost.&nbsp;<br><br>I can actually send you the project of R I am
working in because for this experiment I am only using the Contoso DWH testdata
from Microsoft.&nbsp;<br>The R project is too big to include in the
attachment, so you can download it from my dropbox via this
link:&nbsp;<br><a
href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/lry1v7ka2env5xf/Example.RData?dl=0"
target="_blank">https://www.dropbox.com/s/lry1v7ka2env5xf/Example.RData?dl=0</a><br><br>I
see I a made a small mistake in my description, so I will rewrite it shortly in
steps:&nbsp;<br>1.&nbsp;ruleset &lt;- apriori(sales,
parameter=list(support=0.0005, confidence=0.1, minlen=2)) This gives 780379
rules.&nbsp;<br>2.&nbsp;inspect(subset(ruleset, subset=rhs %pin%
"Product="))<br>3. just inspect(ruleset) does work. When
finishing displaying &nbsp;the 780379 rules, it also show me this and this
message:&nbsp;<br>Warning message:<br>closing unused RODBC
handle 1&nbsp;<br><br>If I understand the last part correctly, I
should add Michael Hahsler's email address to the BCC. Otherwise, my
apologies.&nbsp;<br><br>Thanks
again,&nbsp;<br><br>Kim&nbsp;<br>----------------------------------------<br>&gt;
From: maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch<br>&gt; Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015
10:30:34 +0100<br>&gt; To: minorthreatx at
hotmail.com<br>&gt; CC: r-help at r-project.org; maechler at
stat.math.ethz.ch<br>&gt; Subject: Re: [R] "Negative length
vectors are not allowed"
error<br>&gt;<br>&gt;<br>&gt; &gt; Hi all, I
have a question concerning an error that occurs when using the inspect()
function on a set of rules made by the apriori function from the arules package.
I have a dataset with 12 million records. It contains some basic sales
information (such as product, customer data). I want to use the apriori function
from the arules package on it: ruleset &lt;- apriori(sales,
parameter=list(support=0.0005, confidence=0.1, minlen=2))It gives me 780379
rules. I want to have that much rules on purpose, so hence the parameters being
so low (I guess you can reproduce this problem with any large dataset and low
settings for support and confidence). But then I want to check out the rules
with inspect. It has a subset because I'm only interested in rules with the
attribute Product in the rhs. inspect(subset(ruleset, subset=rhs %pin%
"Product="))Then this error occurs: Error in
inspect(subset(sales3ruleset, subset = rhs %pin% "Product="))
:<br>&gt; &gt; error in evaluating the argument 'x' in
selecting a method for function 'inspect': Error in
.Call("R_or_ngCMatrix", x at data, y at data, PACKAGE =
"arules") :<br>&gt; &gt; negative length vectors are not
allowedI looked around and apparently that part about "negative length
vectors are not allowed" means that you want to create a vector that is
larger than 2^31. How can you get around this limit? Or how can I make the
inspectfunction work in this case?Thanks in advance!Kim<br>&gt; Dear
Kim,<br>&gt;<br>&gt; if you learned to post (i.e. write that
e-mail) in plain text,<br>&gt; the above would look more
humane..<br>&gt;<br>&gt; Still, I was able to decipher it
and you are right in that<br>&gt; you hit a limitation of the current
setup which may well<br>&gt; be linked to the Matrix package which I
maintain, and on which<br>&gt; 'arules'
depends.<br>&gt;<br>&gt; Can you please try to find a
reproducible example [with randomly<br>&gt; generated data; i.e.,
you'd use set.seed(), runif(), rpois(),<br>&gt; rmultinom(),
rnorm(), ...] so we,<br>&gt; the maintainer of 'arules'
Michael Hahsler (BCC'ed: use<br>&gt;
maintainer("arules") to find such an e-mail
address),<br>&gt; and myself can look if and how that limitation might
be lifted.<br>&gt;<br>&gt; Best regards,<br>&gt;
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich<br>
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