How to crash R? - r

Question

Is there a simple way to trigger a crash in R? This is for testing purposes only, to see how a certain program that uses R in the background reacts to a crash and help determine if some rare problems are due to crashes or not.

Answer 1

The easiest way is to call C-code. C provides a standard function abort()[1] that does what you want. You need to call: .Call("abort").
As #Phillip pointed out you may need to load libc via:
on Linux, dyn.load("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6") before issuing .Call("abort"). The path may of course vary depending on your system.
on OS X, dyn.load("/usr/lib/libc.dylib")
on Windows (I just tested it on XP as I could not get hold of a newer version.) you will need to install Rtools[2]. After that you should load dyn.load("C:/.../Rtools/bin/cygwin1.dll").

Answer 2

There is an entire package on GitHub dedicated to this:
crash
R package that purposely crash an R session. WARNING: intended
for test.
How to install a package from github is covered in other questions.

Answer 3

I'm going to steal an idea from #Spacedman, but I'm giving him full conceptual credit by copying from his Twitter feed:
Segfault #rstats in one easy step:
options(device=function(){});plot(1)
reported Danger, will crash your R session.
— Barry Rowlingson (#geospacedman) July 16, 2014

Answer 4

As mentioned in a comment to your question, the minimal approach is a simple call to the system function abort(). One way to do this in one line is to
R> Rcpp::cppFunction('int crashMe(int ignored) { ::abort(); }');
R> crashMe(123)
Aborted (core dumped)
$
or you can use the inline package:
R> library(inline)
R> crashMe <- cfunction(body="::abort();")
R> crashMe()
Aborted (core dumped)
$
You can of course also do this outside of Rcpp or inline, but then you need to deal with the system-dependent ways of compiling, linking and loading.

Answer 5

I'll do this in plain C because my C++-foo isn't Dirkian:
Create a C file, segv.c:
#include <signal.h>
void crashme(){raise(SIGSEGV);}
Compile it at the command line (windows users will have to work this out for themselves):
R CMD SHLIB segv.c
In R, load and run:
dyn.load("segv.so") # or possibly .dll for Windows users
.C("crashme")
Producing a segfault:
> .C("crashme")
*** caught segfault ***
address 0x1d9e, cause 'unknown'
Traceback:
1: .C("crashme")
Possible actions:
1: abort (with core dump, if enabled)
2: normal R exit
3: exit R without saving workspace
4: exit R saving workspace
Selection: 1
aborting ...
Segmentation fault
This is the same behaviour as the one Thomas references in the graphics system bug report which I have filed and might get fixed one day. However this two-liner will always raise a segfault...
Maybe Dirk can one-line-Rcpp-ise it?

Answer 6

If you want to crash your R, try this
lapply("", function(x) eval(sys.call(1)))
(Save everything before running because this immediately results in "R Session Aborted")
Edit: This works for me on Windows 10.