From p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk  Tue Jul 17 01:09:52 2001
From: p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk (Peter Dalgaard BSA)
Date: 17 Jul 2001 02:09:52 +0200
Subject: [R] RE: [Rd] too many arguments in foreign function call
In-Reply-To: "Warnes, Gregory R"'s message of "Mon, 16 Jul 2001 19:30:26 -0400"
References: <5429125E11E4D411AF7300805FE603A8014CEC78@groexmbcr02.pfizer.com>
Message-ID: <x2pub0pga7.fsf@blueberry.kubism.ku.dk>

"Warnes, Gregory R" <gregory_r_warnes@groton.pfizer.com> writes:

> Brian, do you really expect everyone to get in the habit of writing C code
> to translate R SEXP into appropriate C or Fortran objects?   For the large
> number of cases where the objects to be passed to and from C/Fortran are
> simple scalars and vectors it really makes sense to keep the code to do the
> translation in a standard library routine like do_dotcode().  This keeps the
> bugs down to a minimum and makes it as easy as possible for people to
> interface code.
> 
> All I suggested doing was removing the arbitrary restriction to <= 65
> parameters.  I even provided the code.  What's the problem?

Some anxiety that there might be platforms that really don't allow
many parameters, I suppose. (As opposed to the arbitrary limit imposed
by R, essentially caused by the programmer giving up after

    case 65:
        retval = (SEXP)fun(
            cargs[0],  cargs[1],  cargs[2],  cargs[3],  cargs[4],
            cargs[5],  cargs[6],  cargs[7],  cargs[8],  cargs[9],
            cargs[10], cargs[11], cargs[12], cargs[13], cargs[14],
            cargs[15], cargs[16], cargs[17], cargs[18], cargs[19],
            cargs[20], cargs[21], cargs[22], cargs[23], cargs[24],
            cargs[25], cargs[26], cargs[27], cargs[28], cargs[29],
            cargs[30], cargs[31], cargs[32], cargs[33], cargs[34],
            cargs[35], cargs[36], cargs[37], cargs[38], cargs[39],
            cargs[40], cargs[41], cargs[42], cargs[43], cargs[44],
            cargs[45], cargs[46], cargs[47], cargs[48], cargs[49],
            cargs[50], cargs[51], cargs[52], cargs[53], cargs[54],
            cargs[55], cargs[56], cargs[57], cargs[58], cargs[59],
            cargs[60], cargs[61], cargs[62], cargs[63], cargs[64]);
        break;

There's obviously no portable and neat way of doing variable length
argument lists.)

You don't need to go via SEXPs to solve your problem, and in fact not
even to C. You could for instance use (pardon, my Fortran is getting
rusty): 

      subroutine doit(work, p, i)
      double precision work(1)
      integer p(59), i(25)
      call myfun(work(1),work(p(1)),work(p(2)),....,work(p(59)),
     +           i(1),...,i(25))
      return
      end
-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
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[R] RE: [Rd] too many arguments in foreign function call
Peter Dalgaard BSA