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
