callr (version 3.3.1)

r_session_debug: Interactive debugging of persistent R sessions

Description

The r_session$debug() method is an interactive debugger to inspect the stack of the background process after an error.

Arguments

Details

$debug() starts a REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop), that evaluates R expressions in the subprocess. It is similar to browser() and debugger() and also has some extra commands:

  • .help prints a short help message.

  • .where prints the complete stack trace of the error. (The same as the $traceback() method.

  • .inspect <n> switches the "focus" to frame <n>. Frame 0 is the global environment, so .inspect 0 will switch back to that.

To exit the debugger, press the usual interrupt key, i.e. CTRL+c or ESC in some GUIs.

Here is an example session that uses $debug() (some output is omitted for brevity):

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> rs <- r_session$new()
> rs$run(function() knitr::knit("no-such-file"))
Error in rs_run(self, private, func, args) :
 callr subprocess failed: cannot open the connection

> rs$debug() Debugging in process 87361, press CTRL+C (ESC) to quit. Commands: .where -- print stack trace .inspect <n> -- inspect a frame, 0 resets to .GlobalEnv .help -- print this message <cmd> -- run <cmd> in frame or .GlobalEnv

3: file(con, "r") 2: readLines(input2, encoding = "UTF-8", warn = FALSE) 1: knitr::knit("no-such-file") at #1

RS 87361 > .inspect 1

RS 87361 (frame 1) > ls() [1] "encoding" "envir" "ext" "in.file" "input" "input.dir" [7] "input2" "ocode" "oconc" "oenvir" "oopts" "optc" [13] "optk" "otangle" "out.purl" "output" "quiet" "tangle" [19] "text"

RS 87361 (frame 1) > input [1] "no-such-file"

RS 87361 (frame 1) > file.exists(input) [1] FALSE

RS 87361 (frame 1) > # <CTRL + C> # ----------------------------------------------------------------------