[R-pkg-devel] Unexpected symbol when checking package examples

On 11/11/2018 6:53 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

On 11/11/2018 3:39 PM, Jared Knowles wrote:

Hi!

I have a bit of a weird issue when I'm trying to check my package merTools
(source repo available here: https://github.com/jknowles/merTools

On Windows and Linux builds for R-release and R-devel, when R CMD CHECK
checks examples, it returns the following error below:

Warning: parse error in file 'merTools-Ex.R':
1: unexpected symbol
117: cleanEx()
118: nameEx

I also get this error on MacOS.

Upon inspecting the example file generated by R CMD CHECK (mertools-Ex.R) -
it contains only valid R code. I can run it line by line or source the
whole file in R without any errors. But, during the check process, this
error occurs.

The problem is in the REimpact help file.  It contains this:

zed3 <- REimpact(g1, newdata = InstEval[9:12, ], groupFctr = "d", breaks
= 5,

and there's no closing paren.

This is in a \donttest section of the examples, so it gets deleted when
running the examples, and that's the version of merTools-Ex.R that is
left at the end.  But the warning happened in a different test,

* checking for unstated dependencies in examples ... WARNING
Warning: parse error in file 'merTools-Ex.R':
1: unexpected symbol
118: cleanEx()
119: nameEx
        ^

and it is based on a different version of that file that doesn't omit
the \donttest section.

This is arguably an R bug:  the line numbers are misleading, since they
refer to a version of the file that no longer exists.  Perhaps when you
say \donttest, no tests should be done.

Cancel that last sentence:  if you run "example(REimpact)", you get a
syntax error message, because \donttest is not the same as \dontrun.  So
this has to be fixed in the original file.

But the first part is still right:  you shouldn't say the problem is on
line 119 of 'merTools-Ex.R', and then rewrite the file so that line
isn't there any more.