Error `The provided value was not a valid string reference.` when missing values in long character vector

[etiennebacher]

#584 added strL usage when a string is longer than 2045 characters:

• write_dta() now uses strL when strings are too long to be stored in an str# variable (write_dta support for long string (strL)? #437). strL is used when strings are longer than 2045 characters by default, which matches Stata's behaviour, but this can be reduced with the strl_threshold argument.

This works for a character vector without missing values:

library(haven)
dest <- tempfile(fileext = ".dta")
dat <- data.frame(x = c("a", strrep("a", 2046)))
write_dta(dat, dest)

However it errors when there is a missing value in the character vector:

library(haven)
packageVersion("haven")
#> [1] '2.5.4.9000'

dest <- tempfile(fileext = ".dta")
dat <- data.frame(x = c("a", NA, strrep("a", 2046)))
                             ### <--------------------------------added a missing value
write_dta(dat, dest)
#> Error: Failed to insert value [2, 1]: The provided value was not a valid string reference.

Session info

sessioninfo::session_info()
#> ─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  setting  value
#>  version  R version 4.4.1 RC (2024-06-06 r86715 ucrt)
#>  os       Windows 10 x64 (build 19045)
#>  system   x86_64, mingw32
#>  ui       RTerm
#>  language (EN)
#>  collate  English_Europe.utf8
#>  ctype    English_Europe.utf8
#>  tz       Europe/Paris
#>  date     2024-09-18
#>  pandoc   3.1.11 @ C:/Program Files/RStudio/resources/app/bin/quarto/bin/tools/ (via rmarkdown)
#> 
#> ─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
#>  package     * version    date (UTC) lib source
#>  cli           3.6.3      2024-06-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  digest        0.6.37     2024-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  evaluate      0.24.0     2024-06-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  fansi         1.0.6      2023-12-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  fastmap       1.2.0      2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  forcats       1.0.0      2023-01-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  fs            1.6.4      2024-04-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  glue          1.7.0      2024-01-09 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  haven       * 2.5.4.9000 2024-09-18 [1] Github (tidyverse/haven@73c6d46)
#>  hms           1.1.3      2023-03-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  htmltools     0.5.8.1    2024-04-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  knitr         1.48       2024-07-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  lifecycle     1.0.4      2023-11-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  magrittr      2.0.3      2022-03-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  pillar        1.9.0      2023-03-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  pkgconfig     2.0.3      2019-09-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  reprex        2.1.1      2024-07-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  rlang         1.1.4      2024-06-14 [1] Github (r-lib/rlang@ae699d1)
#>  rmarkdown     2.28       2024-08-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  rstudioapi    0.16.0     2024-03-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  sessioninfo   1.2.2      2021-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  tibble        3.2.1      2023-03-20 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  utf8          1.2.4      2023-10-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  vctrs         0.6.5      2023-12-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.0)
#>  withr         3.0.1      2024-07-31 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  xfun          0.47       2024-08-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#>  yaml          2.3.10     2024-07-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.4.1)
#> 
#>  [1] C:/Users/etienne/AppData/Local/Programs/R/R-4.4.1rc/library
#> 
#> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

[aaronrudkin]

This is happening for me as well. As an intermediate fix, since NAs are not significant for me, I just do a variant of mutate(dat, across(where(is.character), ~ replace_na(.x, "")))