[R] search path question

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Actually, it does

     if (is.character(file))
         if (file == "")
             file <- stdin()
         else {
             file <- file(file, "r")
             on.exit(close(file))
         }

so all the searching is done in the file() connection.

You could do this via a search_file() connection wrapper, but there is a 
problem with ensuring connections get closed (which on.exit does here).

On Tue, 29 May 2007, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> Zhiliang Ma wrote:
>> Thanks, Barry.
>> In fact, I have a function just like yours, and I'm looking for a simple
>> alternative function, which is like "path" in Matlab.
>
>  Dont think it can be done - if you look at the code for 'scan', it
> disappears off into internal() calls to do the business of finding and
> reading a file, so you're going to have trouble changing its behaviour
> in R. You'd have to patch R's C source to implement a search path.
>
> Barry
>
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-- 
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)
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