[R] Odd crash with tcl/tk

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 10:06 AM, AndrewPage <savejarvis at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Recently, I've been trying to use packages in R that require loading the
> Tcl/Tk interface.  However, I get a strange result and a crash that I
> haven't been able to find discussion about on these boards (or any others).
>
> When I enter library(tcltk), it reads "Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... ", but
> then never says "done" or displays some sort of error message.  Looks like
> this:
>
>> x11()
>> library(tcltk)
> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ...
>>
>
>
> Now you can type additional commands in, at your peril!  For example, if I
> type in the text "library", nothing happens, but "library(" causes R to
> freeze up irreparably, with "executing:
> try(gsub('\\s+','',paste(capture.output(print(args(library)))),collapse=")),silent=TRUE)"
> displayed at the bottom.  When this happens, there's nothing you can do but
> restart R because it's completely frozen.
>
> I'm running R version 2.11.1 Patched (2010-07-27 r52627)
>
> [R.app GUI 1.35 (5603) i386-apple-darwin9.8.0]
>
> with XQuartz 2.3.5 (xorg-server 1.4.2-apple53)
>
> on a mac (snow leopard)
>
> Thanks for any help/suggestions in advance,
>
> Andrew

One thought is that if this is to use gsubfn or sqldf (which uses
gsubfn) then you can get them to not use the tcltk code but use R code
instead by either of these two means:

1. issue the command:
options(gsubfn.engine = "R")
before issuing your library(sqldf) or library(gsubfn) command.  You
can put the options command in your .Rprofile if you like and then you
will have it on every session.

or

2. use a build of R that has no tcltk in it.  In that case it will
recognize it and switch to using R.  I believe one such build exists
for the Mac.