tamper

Easier Debugging of magrittr Pipes

One difficulty of magrittr pipes is that they make debugging harder. If you don't always write correct code, and you use pipes, then you'll find tamper very useful. It is the magrittr specific alternative of the recover function: when used with options(error = tamper), after an error it displays the whole pipeline, marks the place of the error, and helps saving the temporary results.

Installation

devtools::install_github("gaborcsardi/tamper")

Usage

options(error = tamper::tamper)

Then, if you make a mistake in a pipeline, instead of the standard R stack trace, tamper is invoked and you can explore the data in the pipeline, and also save to a temporary variable.

library(magrittr)
1:10 %>%
  multiply_by(10) %>%
  add(10) %>%
  add("oh no!") %>%
  subtract(5) %>%
  divide_by(5)

You will see:

Error in add(., "oh no!") : non-numeric argument to binary operator

Enter 0 to exit or choose:

1:    Switch mode
2:    Take me to the error

3:    1:10 %>%
4:      multiply_by(., 10) %>%
5:      add(., 10) %>%
6: ->   add(., "oh no!") %>%
7:      subtract(., 5) %>%
8:      divide_by(., 5)

Selection:

The stage with the error is clearly marked with an arrow. You can get to the function in which the error happened by selecting 2. (Unless it is a primitive function, those are not in the call stack.)

If you select 6, you can browse the frame that corresponds to the pipeline stage in which the error happened:

Selection: 6
Called from: eval(substitute(expr), envir, enclos)
Browse[1]> ls()
[1] "function_list" "k"             "value"

value is the value of the . dot variable, at the beginning of the pipeline stage:

Browse[1]> value
[1]  20  30  40  50  60  70  80  90 100 110

If you don't want to redo the initial part of the pipeline, you can save value to a global variable in your workspace:

Browse[1]> assign("value", value, envir = globalenv())

Feedback

Please see our issue tracker.

License

MIT © Gábor Csárdi.