Hi, I would like to un-compress a gz or a bz2 file to current working directory. I am able to open the connection in a variety of ways, but than cannot access the *.*nc file inside. Is there a way of accessing the netcdf wiathout uncompressing? (I am using windows8, R 3.0.3) An example of what I tried so far is in the end. Thank you very much in advance, Any help would be greatly appreciated, Cheers, M. Here it is what I tried: EXAMPLE: # File URL: (Example from globcolour): url2 = c(" ftp://globcolour_data:fgh678@ftp.acri.fr/EURO_4KM/RAN/CHL1/MERGED/GSM/1997/MONTHLY/L3m_19970901-19970930__EURO_4_GSM-SWF_CHL1_MO_00.nc.gz ") #file name: fname2="L3m_19970901-19970930__EURO_4_GSM-SWF_CHL1_MO_00.nc.gz" # This command downloads the file to working directory (note the first is a large file): download.file(url2, fname2, method = "auto", quiet = FALSE, mode="wb", cacheOK = TRUE) # can we access the url file, without downloading it locally? Does not work. # using raster: require(raster) raster(url2) # using ncdf: require(ncdf) open.nc(url2) # Alternatives to uncompress manually, from R: # 1. to access the file contents, we need to open the connection. A tried several alternatives: untar(fname2) # Error in rawToChar(block[seq_len(ns)]) : # embedded nul in string: 'CDF\001\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\n\0\0\0\003\0\0\0\003lon\0\0\0\034 \0\0\0\003lat\0\0\0\016\020\0\0\0\004time\0\0\0\001\0\0\0\f\0\0\0\027\0\0\0\vConventions\0\0\0\0\002\0\0\0\006CF-1.0\0\0\0\0\0\005titl' # 2. Using gzfile: mycon1 <- gzfile(fname2, open="rb") #rb goes for open binary files mycon1 require(raster) raster(mycon1) # Error in (function (classes, fdef, mtable) : # unable to find an inherited method for function 'raster' for signature '"gzfile"' open.ncdf(mycon1) # Error in open.ncdf(mycon1) : Error in open.ncdf trying to open file 12 # 3. Using gzcon: mycon1 <- gzcon(url(url2)) raw <- textConnection(readLines(mycon1 ))> warnings()# Warning messages: # 1: line 1 appears to contain an embedded nul # 2: line 2 appears to contain an embedded nul (...) # 4. Another alternative, using RCurl: library(RCurl) #?getBinaryURL #Requires Rcompression that "package 'Rcompression' is not available (for R version 3.0.3 RC)" #gunzip(fname) #getBinaryURL(url2) # Still, if I download the file and unzip using manually to the windows explorer (using 7zip in this case), I can open and plot it easily: chl=raster("L3m_19970901-19970930__EURO_4_GSM-SWF_CHL1_MO_00.nc") plot(chl) [[alternative HTML version deleted]]