[R] contextstack overflow

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Gisela Sturm wrote:

> I?m an absolute beginner in R programming?I have a really long R-code with
> many variables. When I run the program I always get an error at the same
> place called ?contextstack overflow?. Does anybody know what to do in this
> case? Are there so strict limitations in R? If yes, is it possible to handle
> it? How?

There are limits, and they are quite high -- it is far more likely that 
you have an error in your R code.

In this particular case, it is saying that you have more than 50 nested 
parse contexts -- that is nested if, [, [[, {, ( calls.

I find it helpful to use a syntax-aware editor (e.g. ESS) as that will 
highlight these things for you via indentation patterns.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595