segfault interest?

On Wed, 2010-11-24 at 12:12 -0500, ivo welch wrote: 

I just figured out what is happening.  The root drive (presumably OSX
virtual memory) becomes depleted.  The error message about "memory not
mapped" was a hint, too.  So, not really R's fault.  However, I wonder

It still may be R's fault. This segfault occurs because R (or third
party code called by R) attempts to access memory beyond what is
allocated/mapped. It's very likely a programming error. A bug report is
warranted, subject to Duncan's earlier comments. 

Does the segfault only occur when a memory limit is reached?

The top five functions in your traceback (below) are all defined in the
base package...

-Matt

*** caught segfault *** 
address 0xdc3f9b48, cause 'memory not mapped'
Traceback:
1: rep.int(seq_len(nx), rep.int(rep.fac, nx))
2: rep.int(rep.int(seq_len(nx), rep.int(rep.fac, nx)), orep)
3: expand.grid(seq_len(nx), seq_len(ny))
4: merge.data.frame(d, ss)
5: merge(d, ss)
6: valid.range(opt)
7: eval.with.vis(expr, envir, enclos)
8: eval.with.vis(ei, envir)
9: source("fut-into-opts.R")

whether R can be made to abort more gracefully, or at least trap the
error message and translate it into something more meaningful ("you
have run out of [virtual] memory when executing 'R statement' ").  of
course, this may not be possible at all.

/iaw

-- 
Matthew S. Shotwell
Graduate Student 
Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Medical University of South Carolina