On 1/1/2006 1:05 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/28/2005 9:50 AM, Seth Falcon wrote:
>>
>>>On 27 Dec 2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>This is a bug in load, isn't it? load() opens the connection but
>>>>doesn't close it.
>>>
>>>
>>>Well, it may be that load needs a small fix, but that doesn't fix
>>>anonymous connections in general, IMO.
>>
>>No it doesn't. However, I've committed the small fix.
>
>
> It was not even a bug in load: close() and open() are not pairs. (I
> didn't pick the names!) Your `fix' destroys a connection, which is
> not the documented behaviour and far more dangerous than leaving it open.
>
> The lifecycle of a connection is (see e.g. my R-news article)
>
> create->open->close->destroy
>
> and close() does both of the last two. Please revert this change.
> Ideally we would close and not destroy if the connection was opened, but
> that needs a better C-level interface in place of this R-level one.
Sorry about that. I've done the reversion.
Is it worth putting that C-level interface in place to make load() more
compatible with ?connections which says,
'open' opens a connection. In general functions using connections
will open them if they are not open, but then close them again, so
to leave a connection open call 'open' explicitly.
? I suppose a natural way to do it would be to add a "destroy=TRUE"
argument to close(), and then have load() do
on.exit(close(con, destroy=FALSE))
but maybe it would be better to add a separate function to do this, for
better green book compatibility.
Duncan Murdoch
>
>
>>>The loop could easily have been:
>>>
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>> print(load(url(testUrl, open="r")))
>>>}
>>>
>>>And it doesn't need to be related to url or load:
>>>
>>>cat("a line of text\n", file="another-example.txt")
>>>z <- NULL
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>> z <- c(z, readLines(file("another-example.txt", open="r")))
>>>}
>>>
>>>Also, connections are "in use" even if they are closed:
>>>
>>>for (i in 1:50) {
>>> if (isOpen(file("another-example.txt")))
>>> stop("you will not get here")
>>>}
>>
>>I think the general problem is that R doesn't have references (or at
>>least, they aren't in a final, documented state). If the garbage
>>collector closed a connection, then things would go wrong when there
>>were two copies of it: the second one would be messed up when the first
>>was destroyed. If we had references, then opening a connection could
>>create a connection object and a reference to it; the connection object
>>would remain as long as there were any references to it, and could be
>>destroyed (and automatically closed) after the last reference was gone.
>
>
> However, that just isn't how connections are documented in the Green Book
> (referenced on all the relevant help pages, so required reading) and
> getConnection() allows you to create an R object pointing to a connection
> that previously had none. The OP has never told us what `anonymous
> connections' are, but it is quite possible that his unstated ideas are
> incompatible with the documentation.
>
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