[R] download files through secure http (HTTPS)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005, bogdan romocea wrote:

> I'm trying to download some data through the HTTPS protocol. However,
> download.file() does not support HTTPS (R 2.0.1 on WinXP):
> Error in download.file(https.url, destfile = "test.txt") :
>        unsupported URL scheme
>
> 1. Is there any other function/package in R that can work with HTTPS?
> 2. If not, what would need to happen to make download.file() support
> HTTPS?

It already does, via its other methods e.g. wget.  Please DO read the help 
page (which DOES tells you that the internal method is file:/ftp:/http: 
only).

Package Rcurl (on Omegahat only these days) can I believe support https:.

Patches to get the internal method to support https: will be considered, 
especially if they support both direct and IE-based code under Windows.

-- 
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