[R] help -> RE: Download.file problem

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 18/10/2010 9:32 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 18/10/2010 8:34 PM, Santosh Srinivas wrote:
>> Dear R-helpers ... any thoughts on the below issue ... will help me complete
>> a small project!
>>
>>
>> Strange problem with download.file . for non existent URL an empty file is
>> created but I am not able to delete the without shutting down R
>>
>> Example:
>>
>>> download.file("http://test.com/test.txt","test.txt")
>>
>> trying URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
>> Error in download.file("http://test.com/test.txt", "test.txt") :
>>     cannot open URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In download.file("http://test.com/test.txt", "test.txt") :
>>     cannot open: HTTP status was '404 Not Found'
>>
>> If you go to working directory through windows explorer, you can see the
>> empty file test.txt but try deleteting the file and it says that the file is
>> locked.
>>
>> I tried closeAllConnections() but of no use.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
> Suggestion:  Don't try to download a nonexistent file to a filename that
> you care about.  It looks like a bug in download.file is leaving the
> file open; Windows won't let you delete open files.
>
> So you could download to tempfile() first to see if it works; if that
> fails, you'll be left with a junk file open, but it will be closed when
> R quits.
>
> If you want to help, you could look through the internal code to figure
> out why the file isn't being closed, and submit a patch.

I've confirmed this is still a problem in R-devel and submitted a bug 
report.  I may be able to take a look at it tomorrow.

Duncan Murdoch