[R] R 2.8.1 and 2.9 alpha crash when running survest of Design package

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

We will try to quickly get out a new version of Design that checks for 
the version of survival that is installed and uses a different .C call 
accordingly.  This will involve ignoring (for now) the new weights 
option Terry has implemented.

Frank


Terry Therneau wrote:
> A couple additions to Thomas's message.
> 
>   The 'survest' function in design directly called C routines in the survival 
> package.  The argument list to the routines changed due to the addition of 
> weights; calling a C routine with the wrong arguments is one of the more 
> reliable ways to crash a program.  The simplest (short term) solution is to use 
> survfit for your curves rather than survest.  Frank Harrell has been aware of 
> the issue for several weeks and is working hard on solving it.  The simple fix 
> is a few minutes, but he's thinking about how to avoid any future problems.  The 
> C routines in survival change arguments VERY rarely, but direcly calling the 
> routines of another package is considered dangerous in general.
>   
>   Most breakage was less severe.  For instance there were a couple of errors in 
> the PBC data set.  I fixed these, and also replaced all the "999" codes with NA 
> to make it easier to use.  Some other packages use this data.  (My name is on 
> most of the PBC papers and I have the master PBC data with all labs, patient id, 
> etc, but I was not the source of the first data set).  
>   
>   We'll be keeping an eye on the R list as the package rolls out; sending a 
> message directly to Thomas and/or I would also be appreciated for issues like 
> this.
>   
>   	Terry Therneau
> 
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-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University