[R] download.file used incorrectly (was not working)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Gustaf Rydevik wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to download a file from the net, and the download.file
> command leaves it corrupted, i.e excel cannot open it. It seems as if
> it's going ok, however.
> Does anyone have an idea of what's going on?

That is a binary file.  You needed mode="wb".
The R posting guide did ask you to update your R before posting, so better 
late than never.


>
> regards,
>
> Gustaf Rydevik
>
> ----
>> download.file(url="http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_demographics.xls",destfile="whodem.xls")
> trying URL 'http://www.who.int/entity/whosis/whostat2006_demographics.xls'
> Content type 'application/vnd.ms-excel' length 77824 bytes
> opened URL
> downloaded 76Kb
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.5.0 (2007-04-23)
> i386-pc-mingw32
>
> locale:
> LC_COLLATE=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_CTYPE=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_MONETARY=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Swedish_Sweden.1252
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"  "methods"
> [7] "base"
>
> other attached packages:
> RWinEdt
> "1.7-5"
>> Sys.getlocale()
> [1] "LC_COLLATE=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_CTYPE=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_MONETARY=Swedish_Sweden.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Swedish_Sweden.1252"
>>
>
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595