[R] How to debug the C programs associated with R-packages?

[David Winsemius]

On Feb 8, 2013, at 5:13 AM, Pulkit Mehrotra wrote:

> hello,
> 
> I was having some problems in debugging C codes assocaited with R-packages.
> I don't have much experience with debugging tools used in C language. Is
> there any methods similar to R-debugging tools such as browser  ,debug etc
> which can be used to debug such C files.
> 
> I was using the foreign package and found a bug in reading dta files
> containing empty strings "" in the data. I was able to find where the error
> originated in the R file but was unable to do so for the C files.

You could report the bug on r-devel, but they are going to expect a description and code that demonstrates that there is a bug. The preferred practice is to ask on R-devel rather than submitting a bug report immediately. That's also the proper mailing list  for asking questions about C-level programming concerns.

-- 

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA