some time ago i communicated the same issue to sean, and i'm very glad he
has improved the package -- thanks!
i'm purposefully posting to r-devel rather than to bioconductor. i think
that download.file could be improved to avoid this sort of spamming output
seen previously with getGEO. currently, it prints dots (when it does) in
5 10-packs per line, line after line. instead, it could be repeatedly
printing them on the same line, to give it a more progress bar-like look.
the function putdots (src/modules/internet/internet.c:218) is responsible
for printing the dots. after each 5x10 bunch of dots, it proceeds to the
next line:
if((i+1) % 50 == 0) REprintf("\n");
but it could instead just swipe the dots and start in the same line again:
if((i+1) % 50 == 0) REprintf("\r%55s\r", "");
it's ad hoc, of course, and requires some other changes to prevent the
progress bar from being rewritten too quickly, e.g., by replacing
if(guess <= 0) putdots(&ndots, nbytes/1024);
with
if(guess <= 0) putdots(&ndots, nbytes/(100*1024));
in lines 427 and 532 in the same file. it's even more ad hoc, but on my
machine it works just fine. i have no time to explore whether it
generalises to other configurations.
the attached patch was compiled and tested with no issues:
svn diff src/modules/internet/internet.c > internet.diff
svn revert src/modules/internet/internet.c
patch -p0 < internet.diff
make
make check # fine
vQ
