Incomplete final line found - what's the big deal?

General
1

Occasionally, when I use the readLines() functions I get the following warning message:

readLines("XXX") : incomplete final line found on 'XXX'

To fix this warning message is straight forward, just add a newline at the end of the file.

My questions are:

  • Why is this an issue?
  • What are the (historical?) reasons behind this warning?
  • Is it good practice to promote this warning to an error?

Note: RStudio has an option that automatically adds a line breaks: Code -> Saving

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Good question.

What does a function like readLines() do?

In OS terms it reads from stdin and writes to stdout, a line at a time. So, it eats a line and then looks for the next line. But what if there is no next line? It could either say, "fine, I'll go with what I got," or "guess I'll have to wait until I'm fed," or "better tell the user I need to know when I'm done."

This isn't a problem on the OS terminal because the operating system has the go-with-that choice baked in. But in character devices, like a file, the C/C++ program needs to be told.

man getc

from the terminal will give you the gory details.

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Thanks! Your answer implies that it is good practice to promote this warning to an error. Do you agree (or am I putting words into your mouth)?

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4

Sorry to be implicit when I should have been explicit.

Yes, the error is needed. It should be more informative such as "... add an empty line to the end of your file."

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