[SPARK-12360] Support using 64-bit long type in SparkR

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Incomplete
• Affects Version/s: 1.5.2
• Component/s: SparkR
• Labels: bulk-closed
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Sun Rui
• Created: 16/Dec/15 07:35
• Updated: 21/May/19 04:32
• Resolved: 21/May/19 04:32

Description

R has no support for 64-bit integers. While in Scala/Java API, some methods have one or more arguments of long type. Currently we support only passing an integer cast from a numeric to Scala/Java side for parameters of long type of such methods. This may have problem covering large data sets.

Storing a 64-bit integer in a double obviously does not work as some 64-bit integers can not be exactly represented in double format, so x and x+1 can't be distinguished.

There is a bit64 package (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bit64/index.html) in CRAN which supports vectors of 64-bit integers. We can investigate if it can be used for this purpose.
two questions are:
1. Is the license acceptable?
2. This will have SparkR depends on a non-base third-party package, which may complicate the deployment.

Issue Links

• relates to: SPARK-14326 Can't specify "long" type in structField