[Rd] R Bug: write.table for matrix of more than 2, 147, 483, 648 elements

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 04/19/2018 02:06 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 18/04/2018 5:08 PM, Tousey, Colton wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I want to report a bug in R that is limiting my capabilities to 
>> export a matrix with write.csv or write.table with over 2,147,483,648 
>> elements (C's int limit). I found this bug already reported about 
>> before: https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17182. 
>> However, there appears to be no solution or fixes in upcoming R 
>> version releases.
>>
>> The error message is coming from the writetable part of the utils 
>> package in the io.c source 
>> code(https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/utils/src/io.c):
>> /* quick integrity check */
>>                  if(XLENGTH(x) != (R_len_t)nr * nc)
>>                      error(_("corrupt matrix -- dims not not match 
>> length"));
>>
>> The issue is that nr*nc is an integer and the size of my matrix, 2.8 
>> billion elements, exceeds C's limit, so the check forces the code to 
>> fail.
>
> Yes, looks like a typo:  R_len_t is an int, and that's how nr was 
> declared.  It should be R_xlen_t, which is bigger on machines that 
> support big vectors.
>
> I haven't tested the change; there may be something else in that 
> function that assumes short vectors.
Indeed, I think the function won't work for long vectors because of 
EncodeElement2 and EncodeElement0. EncodeElement2/0 would have to be 
changed, including their signatures

Tomas



>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>>
>> My version:
>>> R.Version()
>> $platform
>> [1] "x86_64-w64-mingw32"
>>
>> $arch
>> [1] "x86_64"
>>
>> $os
>> [1] "mingw32"
>>
>> $system
>> [1] "x86_64, mingw32"
>>
>> $status
>> [1] ""
>>
>> $major
>> [1] "3"
>>
>> $minor
>> [1] "4.3"
>>
>> $year
>> [1] "2017"
>>
>> $month
>> [1] "11"
>>
>> $day
>> [1] "30"
>>
>> $`svn rev`
>> [1] "73796"
>>
>> $language
>> [1] "R"
>>
>> $version.string
>> [1] "R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)"
>>
>> $nickname
>> [1] "Kite-Eating Tree"
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Colton
>>
>>
>> Colton Tousey
>> Research Associate II
>> P: 816.585.0300   E: colton.tousey at kc.frb.org
>> FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF KANSAS CITY
>> 1 Memorial Drive   *   Kansas City, Missouri 64198   * 
>> www.kansascityfed.org
>>
>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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>
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