Some small changes (typo, punctuation fix) to the NEWS file, and some
suggested changes to download.file.Rd (I found some of the phrasing
awkward/hard to parse, and got carried away). (I *think* .txt
attachments are OK on the list?)
FWIW I started fixing the download.file man page because I went there
to understand/be horrified by the following (documented!) infelicity:
with the default settings (on Unix at least), failing to download what
is intended to be a new version of a file will wipe out the original,
leaving an empty file. So, for example, a temporary network problem can
lead to a pipeline being unworkable (because a critical file has been
emptied) until the network comes back ... I don't suppose there's any
chance this behaviour could be changed ... ??
> What happens to the destination file(s) in the case of error
depends on the method and R version. Currently the ?"internal"?,
?"wininet"? and ?"libcurl"? methods will remove the
file if there
the URL is unavailable except when ?mode? specifies appending when
the file should be unchanged.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/293/
cheers
Ben Bolker
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