[Rd] seek(con, 0, "end", rw="r") does not always work correctly (PR#7901)

[tplate at blackmesacapital.com]

ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de wrote:
> tplate at blackmesacapital.com wrote:
> 
> 
>>I've noticed that seek(con, 0, "end", rw="r") on a file connection does 
>>not always work correctly after a write (R 2.1.0 on Windows).
>>
>>[Is a call to fflush() needed inside file_seek() in main/connections.c?]
> 
> 
> 
> If you have an idea where to fflush() precisely and your patch works, 
> please tell it! I'll happily run some test cases where seeking matters.
> 

I couldn't see why the current code was returning a bad value under some 
conditions.  (That's why didn't offer anything more than a suggestion). 
  My suggestion to use an fflush() was a guess (hence the question mark, 
but evidence for the guess being correct was that doing a flush at the R 
command line made the whole thing work correctly.)  To be safe, I would 
try to put a flush() right at the beginning of file_seek(), before the 
call to f_tell().  I tried this, and with the modification the test case 
I gave produced correct output.  Here's how the beginning of my modified 
file_seek() function (in main/connections.c) looks:

static double file_seek(Rconnection con, double where, int origin, int rw)
{
     Rfileconn this = con->private;
     FILE *fp = this->fp;
#if defined(HAVE_OFF_T) && defined(__USE_LARGEFILE)
     off_t pos;
#else
#ifdef Win32
     off64_t pos;
#else
     long pos;
#endif
#endif
     int whence = SEEK_SET;
     fflush(fp);
     pos = f_tell(fp);

     /* make sure both positions are set */


> Note that ?seek currently tells us "The value returned by seek(where=NA) 
> appears to be unreliable on Windows systems, at least for text files."
> It would be nice if this comment could be removed, of course ....

May the explanation could be given that this happens with text files 
because Windows inserts extra characters at end-of-lines when reading 
"text" mode files (but with binary files, things should be fine.)  This 
particular issue is documented in Microsoft Windows documentation (e.g., 
at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/75yw9bf3(en-us,vs.80).aspx, found 
by searching on Google using the terms "fseek windows documentation"). 
Are there any known issues using seek with binary files under Windows? 
If there are not, then the caveat could be made specific to text files 
and all vagueness removed.

-- Tony Plate

> 
> Uwe Ligges
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>Example (see the lines with the "***WRONG***" comment)
>>
>> > # seek(, rw="r") on a file does not always work correctly after a write
>> > f <- file("tmp3.txt", "w+b")
>> > # Write something earlier in the file
>> > seek(f, 10, rw="w")
>>[1] 0
>> > writeLines(c("ghi", "jkl"), f)
>> > seek(f, 20, rw="w")
>>[1] 18
>> > writeLines(c("abc"), f)
>> > seek(f, 0, "end", rw="w")
>>[1] 24
>> > # Try to read at the end of the file
>> > seek(f, 0, "end", rw="r")
>>[1] 0
>> > readLines(f, -1)
>>character(0)
>> > seek(f, 0, "end", rw="w")
>>[1] 18
>> > # write something at the end of the file
>> > writeLines(c("def"), f)
>> > # Try to read at the end of the file
>> > # flush(f) # flushing here makes the seek work correctly
>> > seek(f, 0, "end", rw="r")
>>[1] 24
>> > seek(f, NA, rw="r") # ***WRONG*** (should return 28)
>>[1] 24
>> > readLines(f, -1) # ***WRONG*** (should return character(0))
>>[1] "def"
>> > seek(f, 20, rw="r")
>>[1] 28
>> > readLines(f, -1)
>>[1] "abc" "def"
>> > seek(f, 0, "end", rw="r") # now it works correctly
>>[1] 28
>> > seek(f, NA, rw="r")
>>[1] 28
>> > readLines(f, -1)
>>character(0)
>> > close(f)
>> >
>> > version
>>          _
>>platform i386-pc-mingw32
>>arch     i386
>>os       mingw32
>>system   i386, mingw32
>>status
>>major    2
>>minor    1.0
>>year     2005
>>month    04
>>day      18
>>language R
>> >
>>
>>-- Tony Plate
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> 
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