OK, that suggests setting at the options level would solve both of your problems and that seems like the best approach. I don't really want to pass this around as a parameter through the maze of functions that might actually download something if we don't have to.
I think we can provide something early next week on R-devel for folks to test. But I suspect that as Henrik also does, the set of sites that will refuse us with a User-Agent header will be much larger than those that James has found that refuse us without it. best wishes Robert Henrik Bengtsson wrote: > On 7/28/06, Robert Gentleman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I wonder if it would not be better to make the user agent string >> something that is configurable (at the time R is built) rather than at >> run time. This would make Seth's patch about 1% as long. Or this could >> be handled as an option. The patches are pretty extensive and allow for >> setting the agent header by setting parameters in function calls (eg >> download.files). I am not sure there is a good use case for that level >> of flexibility and the additional code is substantial. >> >> >> The issue that I think arises is that there are potentially other >> systems that will be unhappy with R's identification of itself and so >> some users may also need to turn it off. >> >> Any strong opinions? > > Actually two: > > 1) If you wish to pull down (read extract from HTML or similar) live > data from the web, you might want to be able to "immitate" a certain > browser. For instance, if you tell some webserver you're a simple > "mobile phone" or "lynx", you might be able get back very clean data. > Some servers might also block unknown web browsers. > > 2) If the webserver of a package reprocitory decided to make use of > the user-agent string to decide what version of the reprocitory it > should deliver, I would like to be able to trick the server. Why? > Many times I found myself working on a system where I do not have the > rights to update to the latest or the developers version of R. > However, although I have not the very latest version of R you can do > work. For instance, in Bioconductor the biocLite() & co gives you > either the stable or the developers of Bioconductor depending on your > R version, but looking into the biocLite() code and beyond, you find > that you actually can install a Bioconductor v1.9 package in R v2.3.1. > It can be risky business, but if you know what you're doing, it can > save your day (or week). > > Cheers > > Henrik > >> >> James P. Howard, II wrote: >>> On 7/28/06, Seth Falcon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>>> I have a rough draft patch, see below, that adds a User-Agent header >>>> to HTTP requests made in R via download.file. If there is interest, I >>>> will polish it. >>> It looks right, but I am running under Windows without a compiler. >>> >> -- >> Robert Gentleman, PhD >> Program in Computational Biology >> Division of Public Health Sciences >> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center >> 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M2-B876 >> PO Box 19024 >> Seattle, Washington 98109-1024 >> 206-667-7700 >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> >> > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > -- Robert Gentleman, PhD Program in Computational Biology Division of Public Health Sciences Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M2-B876 PO Box 19024 Seattle, Washington 98109-1024 206-667-7700 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel