Thanks Henrik.

Also, is there a method/package (in R) with which I can unpack a tar file programatically?

thanks again!



----- Original Message ----
From: Henrik Bengtsson <hb@stat.berkeley.edu>
To: Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: Paul Evans <p.evans48@yahoo.com>; r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 12:38:14 PM
Subject: Re: [R] download.file()

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:10 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
<ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> /geodat *is* an absoute path!
>
>  The second argument of download.file is called 'destfile', so what makes
>  you think it is a desination *directory*?

The help file might be the source of confusion:

"destfile: A character string with the name where the downloaded file
is saved.  Tilde-expansion is performed."

....especially the word "where".  Better with "A character string
specifying the name [pathname?] of the saved file" is better.

/Henrik



>
>  Your command works for me, using an account that has write permission in /
>  , and not otherwise.  (It seems very unsafe that you would be using such
>  an account unless this is a pre-Vista Windows machine.)
>
>
>
>  On Tue, 18 Mar 2008, Paul Evans wrote:
>
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  > I wanted to download a file and did the following:
>  > ---------------------------------------------------------
>  >> fileLink <-  'ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/geo/DATA/supplementary/series/GSE1000/GSE1000_RAW.tar'
>  >> download.file(fileLink,'/geoDat')
>  > trying URL 'ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/geo/DATA/supplementary/series/GSE1000/GSE1000_RAW.tar'
>  > ftp data connection made, file length 35307520 bytes
>  > opened URL
>  > downloaded 34480Kb
>  >
>  >>
>  > ------------------------------------------------------------
>  >
>  > However, when I look in the destination directory ('/geoDat'), the file
>  > is not there (I also tried giving it the absolute path).
>  >
>  > What am I doing wrong?
>
>  Not reading the help page?
>
>
>  > thanks!
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  >      ____________________________________________________________________________________
>  > Be a better friend, newshound, and
>  >
>  >
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>  >
>  > ______________________________________________
>  > R-help@r-project.org mailing list
>  > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>  > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>  > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>  >
>
>  --
>  Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
>  Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>  University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>  1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>  Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
>
>
>  ______________________________________________
>  R-help@r-project.org mailing list
>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>  PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>  and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>






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