[R] what does this err mean and how to solve it? Error in file(file, ifelse(append, "a", "w"))

[Yong Wang]

Dear List
I am running a loop downloading  web pages and save the html to a
temporary file (use download.file() )
 then read (using readLines)  it in for processing;
finally write useful info from each processed page to a unique file

the problem is once the loop runs up to somewhere near  5000, it will
throw out an err like below and won't go further.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Error in file(file, ifelse(append, "a", "w")) :
 cannot open the connection
-----------------------------------------------------------------

In the meantime, a request for new connection won't be successful, for
example, a request for the help page of "file" will trigger err below

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 ?file
Error in gzfile(file, "rb") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In gzfile(file, "rb") :
 cannot open compressed file
'C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-211~1.1/library/stats/help/aliases.rds', probable
reason 'Too many open files'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I am not sure if the problem is too many connections not closed. since
I close the file connection after each readLines.
checking with showConnections(all=T) does not show excessive
connections and closeAllConnections() does not help.

Can any one help me on this?


Any answer highly appreciated.

yong