Rserve.eval: Evaluate expressions in a REPL-like fashion

In Rserve: Binary R server

Evaluate expressions in a REPL-like fashion

Description

Rserve.eval evaluates a given expression in a way that is very close to the behavior on the console Read/Evaluate/Print Loop (REPL). Among other things this means printing the result of each expression if visible. The function is guaranteed to not raise an error and in case of an error it returns an object of class Rserve-eval-error with details including the error and the stack trace.

Usage

Rserve.eval(what, where = .GlobalEnv, last.value = FALSE, exp.value = FALSE,
            context = NULL, handlers = list(error=.save.condition))

Arguments

what	expressions to evaluate
where	environment to evaluate in
last.value	logical, if TRUE then the result of the evaluation is returned, otherwise the evaluation is only performed for its side-efects and returns TRUE instead.
exp.value	logical, it TRUE then an error object will include the actual expression that triggered the error, otherwise it will only store the index of the expression in what.
context	optional object that will be used as the Rserve context for the duration of the evaluation (see Rserve.context).
handlers	optional named list of calling handlers to register for the duration of the evaluation. The default is to register an error handlers which stores the error condition so it can be reported in the result - see below.

Details

If what contains one or more expressions, they are evaluated one by one while printing the result of each if visible. Upon error subsequent expressions are not evaluated. If what is not an expression then the only a single evaluation of what is performed and the result is not printed.

The main purpose of this function is to implement console front-ends where the front-end uses parse() + Rserve.eval() to simulate the action of a GUI. Because the function returns in all circumstances it allows clients to rely on a well-define messaging behavior.

Value

If the evaluation triggered an error, the result is an object of class Rserve-eval-error with components:

error	character, error message
traceback	list of contexts in the traceback
expression	if what contains multiple expressions then this will be either an index to the expression that caused the error (exp.value=FALSE) or the actual expression (otherwise).
context	current Rserve context, NULL if none has been set
condition	if any condition has been saved via .save.condition (which is the default) then on error the captured condition object is stored here, NULL otherwise

If the evaluation finished without an error then the result is either TRUE if last.value=FALSE or the value of the last expression otherwise.

Note

Rserve versions up to 1.8-10 did not include the condition component, no calling handlers were registered and there was no condition component in the result. To replicate that behavior or if you don't need that information, you can set handlers=NULL which removes the overhead of adding calling handlers.

No error checking is performed on the handlers parameter, so make sure it is avalid, named list of functions, otherwise an error will occur at evaluation time.

Author(s)

Simon Urbanek

Examples

  g <- function() stop("foo")
  f <- function() g()
  (Rserve.eval(expression(f())))
  (Rserve.eval(parse(text="1:5\n1+1")))
  (Rserve.eval(quote(1+1), last.value=TRUE))

  error_with_condition = function(object = NULL) {
    cond = errorCondition("this is a custom error with condition",
                          object = object, 
                          class = "CustomError")
    stop(cond)
  }
  str(Rserve.eval(quote(error_with_condition("hello")), last.value = TRUE))

Rserve documentation built on June 22, 2024, 6:54 p.m.