[R] Download advice please!

[(Ted Harding)]

On 21-Apr-05 Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> I use wget under Windows all the time.
> 
> However, if you use Internet Explorer (as your cafe probably
> does but I try not to), you can just open
> ftp://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib
> and it will show up as a folder. Just copy that folder
> (e.g. drag it to a user area). It has to be ftp:// - this is
> part of the inbuilt ftp client.
> (It works for uploading too, which is why I know about it.)
> 
> The problem either way is that you will get the Archive, which
> is much larger than the current part.  So I actually use rsync
> to avoid this.

Yes, this is precisely why I wanted something like wget!

Rsync would probably have been persona non grata at the "cafe".

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the help, wget worked a
treat. I hadn't heard of it for Windows (not that I'd given
it a thought previously); nor, incidentally, had the "cafe"
proprietor!

The command I used for "contrib" was (as from the directory
where the wget.exe file and its .dll files are stored)

wget -v -r -l1 -P Rcontrib www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R/src/contrib

which grabs every file (and any directory stubs) immediately
below the path given, but no further down, and puts them
locally at the bottom of a path, below a new directory "Rcontrib",
which has the same structure as the URL.

The "-v" gives verbose, so the proprietor was duly impressed
as hundreds of download reports flashed up the screen, and
duly thanked me for "a very useful piece of software".

Hoping this report from the scene may be of use or encouragement
to any others thinking of doing the same sort of thing,

Thanks again,
Ted.


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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
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Date: 21-Apr-05                                       Time: 15:55:52
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