Inspired by
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7487778/could-you-tell-me-what-this-error-means
I wrote the following very small (one-line) patch which returns an
*informative* error message when R tries to load a zero-byte file rather
than
Error in if (!grepl("RD[AX]2\n", magic)) { : argument is of length zero
I would guess that error messages with the word "magic" in them would
be disturbing to new users, who are probably worried already that R is
magic ...
Ben Bolker
Index: load.R
===================================================================
--- load.R (revision 56743)
+++ load.R (working copy)
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
## Since the connection is not open this opens it in binary mode
## and closes it again.
magic <- readChar(con, 5L, useBytes = TRUE)
+ if (length(magic)==0) stop("empty (zero-byte) file")
if (!grepl("RD[AX]2\n", magic)) {
## a check while we still know the call to load()
if(grepl("RD[ABX][12]\r", magic))
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