[ESS] "marker does not point anywhere" Windows, Emacs/ESS-> SAS

[Paul Johnson]

Here is a ESS SAS problem that does not happen on  all of our
computers, just some. And it works eventually, if you run the program
over.

I've got a Dell laptop in front of me that has Windows 7

I installed Emacs 23.2.1 from Prof Goulet's website, We have SAS 9.2,
and I put a file called "ess-sas.el" in the site.start.d folder.

ess-sas.el has this:

(setq debug-on-error t)

(setq ess-sas-edit-keys-toggle nil)
;Windows example
(setq-default ess-sas-submit-command
"c:/Progra~1/SAS/SASFoundation/9.2/sas.exe")


  ;;2; (setq ess-sas-local-unix-keys t)
;;  (setq ess-sas-local-pc-keys t)
  ;;4; (setq ess-sas-global-unix-keys t)
   (setq ess-sas-global-pc-keys t)

   (ess-sas-global-pc-keys
==================================================

On some other machines here, this works if I just use the full path, as in

(setq-default ess-sas-submit-command "c:/Program
Files/SAS/SASFoundation/9.2/sas.exe")

But this particular machine I'm looking at goes nowhere without the
old Progra~1 thing. Oh, well.

Anyway, Open a sas file in Emacs:

data a;
    do i = 1 to 100;
        x = normal(0);
        output;

        end;
    proc means data=a;

run;


Hit the F8 key, CRASHOLA.  here's the debug output


Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Marker does not point anywhere")
  ansi-color-filter-region(#<marker in no buffer> #<marker at 4 in *shell*>)
  ansi-color-process-output("")
  run-hook-with-args(ansi-color-process-output "")
  comint-send-input()
  ess-sas-submit-windows("c:/Progra~1/SAS/SASFoundation/9.2/sas.exe"
"-rsasuser")
  ess-sas-submit()
  call-interactively(ess-sas-submit nil nil)

Close that, go back to SAS file, hit F8 again.

And it runs!

Can you explain / fix / console me?

Oh, one more thing. I notice Emacs has a buffer called "shell" and it
looks like this after one failure and one success:

=====================================================

d:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop>d:

d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop>d:
cd "d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop\"
start c:/Progra~1/SAS/SASFoundation/9.2/sas.exe -sysin "test" -rsasuser -icon
d:

d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop>cd "d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop\"

d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop>start
c:/Progra~1/SAS/SASFoundation/9.2/sas.exe -sysin "test" -rsasuser
-icon

d:\users\pauljohn32\Desktop>
====================================

Looks to me as though Emacs/ESS is "double clutching" when it tries to
set the user folder. There's no new prompt after the second "d:".

Hmm. Just testing some more. If I restart Emacs with the SAS file and
hit the F3 key to go to the shell, then the program runs properly the
first time I hit F8.

puzzle.


pj


-- 

Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas