[ESS] Interactive SAS mode hangs

[Erin Jonaitis]

Hi all,

I'm working on a Linux machine (not sure what distribution) using emacs 23.1-28.el6.x86_64 and ESS version 15.03.

I'm used to working in SAS interactively in ESS (i.e. by sending M-x SAS and then executing code chunks one at a time). I'd been working on a much older version of ESS, but my system is in the process of being upgraded and I'm testing ESS on the new machine. Right now R seems to work fine, but when I try to execute (much) SAS code inside ESS, it crashes emacs badly and can only be killed via the command line. Sometimes the crash involves very strange cycling of the cursor image through various possible cursor images (an arrow, two balls, arrows specific to window resizing).

Questions: Any idea what could be the problem? What other information would you need to be able to help diagnose it?


Details of the crashing:
- Trying to define a new data step crashes.
- libname statements do not crash.
- Trying to read data from a set inside a successfully defined library causes a crash.
- Using proc contents on such a dataset also crashes.
- Macro %put statements do not crash.

Sample code:

%put I read the first line; *this works -- prints to the log;
libname temp '/my/path/here'; *this works too -- gives me a "successfully defined" message;

data temp2; *causes a hard crash with weird cursor behavior;
    set temp.temp1;
run;

data temp3; *causes a hard crash;
    infile datalines dsd;
    input id name $;
    datalines;
    1,Fred
    2,Joni
    3,Cara
    4,Mick
;
run;

proc contents data=temp.temp1 order=varnum; *crashes but without the weird cursor stuff;
run;

Erin Jonaitis  |  Biostatistician
Frontier Science & Technology Research Foundation
505 South Rosa Road, Suite 100  |  Madison, WI 53719
(608) 535-8300 x2062  |  jonaitis at fstrf-wi.org