[ARROW-14307] [R] crashes when reading empty feather with POSIXct column

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Duplicate
• Affects Version/s: 5.0.0
• Fix Version/s: 6.0.0
• Component/s: R
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/29880
• Assignee: Neal Richardson
• Reporter: Damiano
• Created: 13/Oct/21 08:25
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:39
• Resolved: 13/Oct/21 19:45

Description

R crashes when writing and then reading an empty feather with at least one POSIXct column.

# Create empty df with one POSIXct column
dates <- as.POSIXct(character())
values <- numeric()
df_empty <- data.frame(dates, values)

df_empty
# [1] dates  values
# <0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

sapply(df_empty, class)
# $dates
# [1] "POSIXct" "POSIXt" 
#
# $values
# [1] "numeric"

# Write and read -> R crashes
tempfile <- tempfile()
arrow::write_feather(df_empty, tempfile)

df_restored <- arrow::read_feather(tempfile)
# >> R crashes here. Tested on 3.6.3 & 4.1.1 for windows and Linux.

unlink(tempfile)

At times, in RStudio, this message is displayed when R crashes.
 
 

Tested on Windows (R version 3.6.3 and 4.1.1) and Linux (R 3.6.3). 

# TESTED ON WINDOWS 
Arrow ‘5.0.0.2’ 
R version 3.6.3 (2020-02-29) 
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit) 
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19043)

R version 4.1.1 (2021-08-10) 
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit) 
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19043)

# TESTED ON LINUX 
Arrow ‘5.0.0.2’ 
R version 3.6.3 (2020-02-29) 
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit) 
# Running under: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)

Issue Links

• duplicates: ARROW-13761 [R] arrow::filter() crashes (aborts R session)