[Rd] Possible changes to connections

[Stephen B. Weston]

Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

 > [I know there is a call to getConnection in package gtools, but
 > the return value is unused!]

Speaking of connections and gtools, I've been wondering if the
gtools setTCPNoDelay function's method of getting the Unix file
descriptor of a socket connection is safe.  It's basically doing
this:

   d <- as.integer(socketConnection("localhost", 80)[1])

Is that depending on an implementation detail that may change?
I think it's useful to allow C extensions to set OS specific
socket options on connection objects.  But perhaps Jeffrey
Horner's proposal addresses this need.

- Steve