read.socket {utils}

R Documentation

Read from or Write to a Socket

Description

read.socket reads a string from the specified socket, write.socket writes to the specified socket. There is very little error checking done by either.

Usage

read.socket(socket, maxlen = 256, loop = FALSE)
write.socket(socket, string)

Arguments

socket	a socket object
maxlen	maximum length of string to read
loop	wait for ever if there is nothing to read?
string	string to write to socket

Value

read.socket returns the string read.

Author(s)

Thomas Lumley

See Also

close.socket, make.socket

Examples

finger <- function(user, host = "localhost", port = 79, print = TRUE)
{
    if (!is.character(user))
        stop("user name must be a string")
    user <- paste(user,"\r\n")
    socket <- make.socket(host, port)
    on.exit(close.socket(socket))
    write.socket(socket, user)
    output <- character(0)
    repeat{
        ss <- read.socket(socket)
        if (ss == "") break
        output <- paste(output, ss)
    }
    close.socket(socket)
    if (print) cat(output)
    invisible(output)
}
## Not run: 
finger("root")  ## only works if your site provides a finger daemon
## End(Not run)

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