Question

Let me add another scoping problem in R, this time with the snowfall package. If I define a function in my global environment, and I try to use that one later in an sfApply() inside another function, my first function isn’t found any more :

#Runnable code. Don't forget to stop the cluster with sfStop()
require(snowfall)
sfInit(parallel=TRUE,cpus=3)

func1 <- function(x){
    y <- x+1
    y
}

func2 <- function(x){
    y <- sfApply(x,2,function(i) func1(i) )
    y
}

y <- matrix(1:10,ncol=2)
func2(y)
sfStop()

This gives :

> func2(y)
Error in checkForRemoteErrors(val) : 
  2 nodes produced errors; first error: could not find function "func1"

If I nest my function inside the other function however, it works. It also works when I use the sfApply() in the global environment. Thing is, I don’t want to nest my function func1 inside that function2, as that would cause that func1 is defined many times (func2 is used in a loop-like structure).

I’ve tried already simplifying the code to get rid of the double looping, but that’s quite impossible due to the nature of the problem. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I think you want to sfExport(func1), though I’m not sure if you need to do it in your .GlobalEnv or inside of func2. Hope that helps…

> y <- matrix(1:10,ncol=2)

> sfExport(list=list("func1"))

> func2(y)
     [,1] [,2]
[1,]    2    7
[2,]    3    8
[3,]    4    9
[4,]    5   10
[5,]    6   11