How to stop a function in R that is taking too long and give it an alternative?

Question

I\'m trying to do a thing \"the right way\". Sometimes \"the right way\" takes too long, depending on the inputs. I can\'t really know a priori when this will be. When \"the

Answer 1

For anyone who wants a lighter weight solution that does not depend on the R.utils package, I ended up using a minimal solution based on the withTimeout() code.

foo <- function() {

  time_limit <- 10

  setTimeLimit(cpu = time_limit, elapsed = time_limit, transient = TRUE)
  on.exit({
    setTimeLimit(cpu = Inf, elapsed = Inf, transient = FALSE)
  })

  tryCatch({
    # do some stuff
  }, error = function(e) {
    if (grepl("reached elapsed time limit|reached CPU time limit", e$message)) {
      # we reached timeout, apply some alternative method or do something else
    } else {
      # error not related to timeout
      stop(e)
    }
  })

}