[R] Bug (?): reading binary files in Windows 10

[Kate Stone]

Ah wow, that answers many questions, thanks!

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 4:41 PM Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>
wrote:

> AFAIK this receiver-side responsibility to specify the text/binary status
> of the file is particularly a problem with the "ftp://" protocol because
> it does not use MIME file encoding (which "http://" uses). MIME allows
> the sending end of the connection to communicate whether the file is text
> or binary, though it uses more bandwidth for the transfer. If the server
> offers you a choice in these days of high bandwidth connections, you may be
> better off sticking with http/https.
>
> Note that MIME is not magic... if the sender is improperly configured then
> the client can potentially receive corrupt data. Fortunately the most
> typical MIME misconfigurations cause the file to be unchanged in all cases,
> leaving it to the receiver to deal with any text file newline decoding
> choice/task after the file transfer is completed.
>
> On December 6, 2018 7:03:48 AM PST, Duncan Murdoch <
> murdoch.duncan using gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 06/12/2018 7:45 AM, Kate Stone wrote:
> >> Hello r-help,
> >>
> >> Could you help me determine whether this is an R bug or not?
> >>
> >> I've been trying to read this binary file in R:
> >>
> >>
> >download.file("
> ftp://ftp.fieldtriptoolbox.org/pub/fieldtrip/tutorial/preprocessing_erp/s04.eeg
> ","s04.eeg")
> >>
> >> and I get a different length file (i.e. much longer) in Windows  >= 8
> >> x64 (build 9200) than in Ubuntu. I've tested it with different R
> >> versions in Windows and different package versions with the same
> >> incorrect result. Other colleagues have tested it on the same
> >> Windows/Ubuntu builds and got the correct length.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure whether this is an R problem or something to do with my
> >> OS specifically, or even with the file itself. Any ideas?? I've
> >> attached a small script demonstrating the issue.
> >
> >On Windows, the `mode = "wb"` argument to download.file() is important,
> >
> >otherwise it is assumed to be a text file, and LF is changed to CR LF.
> >There may also be handling of EOF marks, I forget.
> >
> >Duncan Murdoch
> >
> >______________________________________________
> >R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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> >PLEASE do read the posting guide
> >http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> --
> Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
>


-- 
Kate Stone
PhD candidate
Vasishth Lab | Department of Linguistics
Potsdam University, 14467 Potsdam, Germany
https://auskate.github.io

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