On Apr 11, 2013, at 1:34 PM, Fisher Dennis <fis...@plessthan.com> wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> During the transition to R3.0.0 (OS X), one of the packages that I used --
> SASxport -- did not work until I used the "type=source" option in
> install.packages.
>
> This led to an adventure:
> 1. I downloaded the package source: SASxport_1.2.4.tar.gz
> 2. in the SASxport/R folder, I found all the functions that are part
> of the package.
> I became interested in whether I could "source" these functions directly into
> R and re-create the functionality of the package without
> installing/"require"ing the package.
>
> This started with some success until I encountered one problem that I could
> not overcome.
> When I executed the function write.xport, I received the following error
> message:
> Error in .C("fill_file_header", cDate = xport.dateFMT(cDate), mDate =
> xport.dateFMT(mDate), :
> C symbol name "fill_file_header" not in load table
>
> This appears to be coming from the following line of code in write.xport:
> out(xport.file.header( cDate = cDate, sasVer = sasVer, osType = osType))
> The problem appears to be in
> xport.file.header
> for which the entire code is:
>
> xport.file.header <-
> function(cDate=Sys.time(), mDate=cDate, sasVer="7.00", osType="Unknown" )
> {
> .C("fill_file_header",
> cDate = xport.dateFMT(cDate), # Creation date
> mDate = xport.dateFMT(mDate), # Modification date
> sasVer = toupper(as.character(sasVer)), # SAS version number
> osType = as.character(osType) # Operating System (can include lowercase)
> )
>
> .Call("getRawBuffer", PACKAGE="SASxport")
>
> }
>
> Of note, I commented out the line:
> .Call("getRawBuffer", PACKAGE="SASxport")
> and the same error occurred (I did not expect this is solve the problem).
>
> I then looked in SASxport/src and found three files (which appear to be coded
> in C):
> init.c
> writeSAS.c
> writeSAS.h
> that refer to "fill_file_header"
>
> I suspect that these files need to be accessed in some manner in order for
> xport.file.header and other functions to work correctly.
> The question is how do I access these files:
> Do I "source" them in some manner?
> Put them in a particular location where they are sourced automatically?
>
> I tried dyn.load but that does not appear to be the correct approach.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>
> Dennis
Dennis,
Based upon a review of the messages for the package on CRAN:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_SASxport.html
there are a number of issues with the package, including calls to
deprecated/obsolete functions and some issues with the C code.
That all being said, the package does appear to have binaries available for
Windows and OSX for R 3.0.0. What error(s) are you getting when you try to
install the binary version of the package?
If you are going to use the source version of the package, you will need to
have a C compiler on your system in order to compile the package from source
before it can be installed. However, compiling from source will not resolve the
aforementioned issues. That will require a package update by Greg, the package
maintainer.
The package itself does not appear to have been updated since late 2010, so a
communication with Greg would seem to be in order. I would reasonably presume,
from my own experience, that Greg was contacted about these issues by one or
more of the CRAN maintainers prior to the release of R 3.0.0., which would
suggest that, as has happened in the past, Greg has gone missing.
Regards,
Marc
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