[Rd] Suggesting to have download.file() reflect a new option

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Sounds very reasonable.  Please send me a patch file.

Brian

On Sun, 4 Nov 2001, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

>
> The "auto" method of downloading a file cannot cope with a proxy firewall
> requiring authentication. However, wget can handle this very easily (using
> e.g. ~/.wgetrc).  While it is feasible to add the required
> 	 method="wget"
> to calls such as update.packages(), this approach is rather tedious and could
> easily be controlled by use of a new option.
>
> Below is a simple patch to download.file.R which, when no method is
> specified, queries the (suggested) option download.file.method and sets it if
> found; else the old default "auto" is used. The same patch can be applied to
> windows/download.file.R.  I'd be happy to add a small patch to the
> documentation of both download.file() and options() to complement this is the
> patch is deemed acceptable.
>
> Regards,  Dirk
>
>
> edd@sonny:~/debian/r-base-1.3.1> diff -u src/library/base/R/unix/download.file.R{.orig,}
> --- src/library/base/R/unix/download.file.R.orig        Fri Apr 13 02:50:27 2001+++ src/library/base/R/unix/download.file.R     Sun Nov  4 09:27:47 2001
> @@ -1,9 +1,12 @@
>  download.file <- function(url, destfile, method,
>                            quiet = FALSE, mode = "w")
>  {
> -    method <- if(missing(method)) "auto" else
> -    match.arg(method,
> -              c("auto", "internal", "wget", "lynx", "socket"))
> +    method <- if (missing(method))
> +      ifelse(!is.null(getOption("download.file.method")),
> +             getOption("download.file.method"),
> +             "auto")
> +    else
> +      match.arg(method, c("auto", "internal", "wget", "lynx", "socket"))
>
>      if(method == "auto") {
>          if(capabilities("http/ftp"))
>
>
> --
> Better to have an approximate answer to the right question
> than a precise answer to the wrong question. -- John Tukey
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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