format() applied to an NA character string (PR#9616)

D.Wischik at cs.ucl.ac.uk wrote:
I get strange results when I try to format() an NA character string.

x <- 'sometext'
x[1] <- NA
format(NA, width=32) # displays sensibly, right-justified
format(x,width=32)   # displays sensibly, left-justified
format(x,width=33)   # displays ""
format(x,width=36)   # R exits abnormally with code 5

This happens on Linux too, given slightly larger widths:
It happened for me on Linux in R 2.4.1 at width=32, but those examples are 
fine on both Linux and Windows in pre-2.5.0.

It was (of course) a buffer overflow, fixed now for 2.5.0.
Valgrind got to the correct spot (in paste.c).
R version 2.5.0 RC (2007-04-17 r41210)
....
x <- as.character(NA)
format(x,width=64)
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
Rstrlen (s=0x20000009, quote=0) at ../../../R/src/main/printutils.c:374
374         return Rstrwid(CHAR(s), LENGTH(s), quote);

version

platform       i386-pc-mingw32
arch           i386
os             mingw32
system         i386, mingw32
status
major          2
minor          4.1
year           2006
month          12
day            18
svn rev        40228
language       R
version.string R version 2.4.1 (2006-12-18)

I'm running Windows XP.

Damon.

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Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
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