How to interrupt an R process that hangs

+1--this is the single most-annoying issue with R that I know of.

My usual solution, after accomplishing nothing as R spins idly for a couple
hours, is to kill the process and lose any un-saved work.  save.history() is
my friend, but is a big delay when you work with big data sets as I do, so I
don't run it after every command.

I have cc'd r-help here, however, because I experience this problem with
non-OSX R as well...when I run it in Linux or from the OSX command-line (I
compile R for Darwin without aqua/R-framework), the same thing happens.

Is there some way around this? Is this a known problem?

Google searching suggests no solution, timeline, or anything, but the
problem has been annoying users for at least twelve years:
http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/9704/0151.html

Cordially,
Adam

HI all,

Apologies for this question. I'm sure it's been asked many times, but
despite 20 minutes of looking, I can't find the answer. I never use
the GUI, I use emacs, but my postdoc does, so I don't know what to
tell her about the following:

Occasionally she'll mess up in her code and cause R to hang
indefinitely (e.g., R is trying to do something that will take days).
In these situations, is there an option other than killing R (and the
work you've done on your script to that point)?

Thank you,

Matthew Keller


-- 
Matthew C Keller
Asst. Professor of Psychology
University of Colorado at Boulder
www.matthewckeller.com

_______________________________________________
R-SIG-Mac mailing list
R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac