This help topic is for R version 2.9.0. For the current version of R, try https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/utils/html/make.socket.html
make.socket {utils}R Documentation

Create a Socket Connection

Description

With server = FALSE attempts to open a client socket to the specified port and host. With server = TRUE listens on the specified port for a connection and then returns a server socket. It is a good idea to use on.exit to ensure that a socket is closed, as you only get 64 of them.

Usage

make.socket(host = "localhost", port, fail = TRUE, server = FALSE)

Arguments

host

name of remote host

port

port to connect to/listen on

fail

failure to connect is an error?

server

a server socket?

Value

An object of class "socket".

socket

socket number. This is for internal use

port

port number of the connection

host

name of remote computer

Warning

I don't know if the connecting host name returned when server = TRUE can be trusted. I suspect not.

Author(s)

Thomas Lumley

References

Adapted from Luke Tierney's code for XLISP-Stat, in turn based on code from Robbins and Robbins "Practical UNIX Programming"

See Also

close.socket, read.socket

Examples

daytime <- function(host = "localhost"){
    a <- make.socket(host, 13)
    on.exit(close.socket(a))
    read.socket(a)
}
## Official time (UTC) from US Naval Observatory
## Not run: daytime("tick.usno.navy.mil")

[Package utils version 2.9.0 ]