R can't source() long lines (PR#10383)

This is as documented in ?source, and so is not a bug.

Full_Name: Martin Kober
Version: 2.6.0
OS: Vista & Linux
Submission from: (NULL) (137.208.185.169)

Hi!

I just stumbled upon a problem with file source()ing:

R will fail to source a file if it contains lines longer than about 8192 bytes
("input buffer overflow").

While it's save to say that human-written code won't contain lines that long,
dump()ed data structures may reasonably contain strings longer than that (as in
my case).

What's more, R will happily help you to create such files:

x = paste(rep("12345678", 1024), collapse="")
dump("x")
source("dumpdata.R") ## this fails (on Linux & Vista)

I'm now using save/load, which is probably better in that case anyway. 
Still, I would be nice if source() worked or at least dump() would break 
lines to avoid this issue.
It would be even nicer if users read the documentation rather than 
expected the developers to do so for them.
Best regards,
Martin Kober

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Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
This is as documented in ?source, and so is not a bug.

This gives us a FAQ answer:

Q: What is the difference between a feature and a bug?

A: Features are documented, bugs are undocumented. If it is a bug, it is
either a bug in a function or a bug in the documentation (usually the
latter).

cheers, jari oksanen