[R] Maybe OT: Forking in R scripts?

[K. Elo]

Dear all,

I am currently working a research project on social media interaction. 
As a part of this project, mostly for teaching purposes, I should 
develop a R-based approach for real-time visualisation of streamed data 
(from Twitter).

My idea is simple (and working :) ): A Python-script stream Twitter for 
selected keywords/hashtags/users and redirects the output as JSON in a 
text file. My R-script reads the new entries from this text file every 
5-10 minutes, process the input and updates network and other graphical 
presentations.

Thus far everything is working fine. However, I would like to have the 
possibility to work with my data when my script is sleeping. I just 
wonder whether a simple 'mcparallel({ Sys.sleep(300); TRUE})' (from 
'parallel') would solve my problem? Or is there something I have to take 
into account when using 'parallel'?

My R environment runs on Linux, so forking should work...

Best regrads and thanks in advance,
Kimmo

--
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Dep. for German studies