[Rd] Utilizing the internet module

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Jeffrey Horner wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I'd like to utilize the R_Sock* functions from R_ext/R-ftp-http.h in my
> R package. The intent is to use these in conjunction with R_serialize()
>  to store R objects in a remote data store. I'm aware that version
> 2.2.1 of "Writing R extensions" explains that these may be undocumented
> and unstable, but I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1) are they platform independent? I presume they are...

Only in sense that they have a common interface.

> 2) What's the appropriate way to link against them? On Linux x86, I can
> do this with the Makevars:

You can, but that is a module and not a library and so it does not work on 
MacOS X and may well not work on Windows (you would be lucky prior to R 
2.3.0).

I wonder why you need a C interface at all.  There is serialize() and 
socket connections are available at R level.  Below that, Rsockopen etc 
are exported from R itself and underly make.socket etc.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at 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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595