[R] getting R to download data

[Ben Bolker]

 <sachinthaka.abeywardana <at> allianz.com.au> writes:

> Is it possible to write a program such that it downloads a csv from a given
> web address? Would be great if this could be done at a particular time
> during the day as well. Say 9AM monday-friday.


  downloading a csv file is easy:

x <- read.csv(url("http://whatever.com/my.csv"))

  for scheduling this you probably want to use some scheduling
tool  that works with your OS (in Unix/Linux you would use
"cron") and run R in batch mode (R CMD BATCH ...)

  I suppose you could leave an R job running all the time, having
it go to sleep (?Sys.sleep) in between calls -- I don't know if
Sys.sleep(24*3600) would reliably put it to sleep for a whole day --
but scheduling through the operating system would certainly be
a better way to do it.