[R] using "plot" with time series object - "/hijack thread for quetion re R data capture

[Mike Marchywka]

> Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 00:03:15 -0600
> From: gnolffilc at gmail.com
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] using "plot" with time series object - "axes = FALSE" option does not appear to work
>
> Dear R-help,
>
> I am attempting to plot data using standard R plot utilities. The
> data was retrieved from FRED (St. Louis Federal Reserve) using the
> package quantmod. My question is NOT about quantmod. While I
> retrieve data using quantmod, I am not using its charting utility. I

[...]
>
> Here is what I believe should be a smaller reproducible example of my issue:
>
> #-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> library(quantmod)
>
> getSymbols('PCECTPI', src='FRED')
> is.xts(PCECTPI) # check the type of object - response is 'TRUE'
>
> plot(PCECTPI) # This works fine.
>

I just tried the example and got a graph of something, presumably using
data downloaded from the data provider FRED. I have a lot of bash scripts
to download data from various FRB web pages but I seem to recall these are
based on scraping html and maybe their ftp site ( I'm too lazy to look but
I do remember they had csv data files for download). Often with sites like this,
there is no API or even stable web pages from which to scrape data. Generally
how stable are the R data download things when no agreement with data provider
is in place? I'm impressed that someone is willing to maintain such a helpful
facility as this is the most annoying kinds of stuff to write but also note
that sometimes agencies do solicit public input on related topics
and it may be helpful for R users to response and comment on the importance
of computer readable data.