I'd add my support for mode = "wb" to (eventually) become the default, though I respect Tomas's comments about backwards-compatibility.
Instead of making the argument mandatory (which would immediately break scripts -- even ones that won't be helped by changing to mode = 'wb') or otherwise changing behaviour, perhaps download.file could start to emit a message (not a warning) whenever the argument is missing on Windows. The message could say something like 'Using `mode = 'w'` which will corrupt non-text files. Set `mode = 'wb'` for binary downloads or see the help page for other options.' Emitting a message has the lightest impact on existing scripts, while alerting new users to future mistakes. On 7 May 2018 at 18:49, Joris Meys <jorism...@gmail.com> wrote: > Martin, also from me a heartfelt thank you for taking care of this. Some > thoughts on Henrik's response: > > On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 2:28 AM, Henrik Bengtsson <henrik.bengts...@gmail.com >> wrote: > >> >> I still argue that the current behavior cause more harm than it helps. >> > > I agree with your analysis of the problems this legacy behaviour causes. > > Deprecating the default mode="w" on Windows can be done in steps, e.g. >> by making the argument mandatory for a while. This could be done on >> all platforms because we're already all affected, i.e. we need to >> specify 'mode' to avoid surprises. >> > > That sounds like a reasonable way to move away from this discrepancy > between OS. > > >> What about case-insensitive matching, e.g. data.ZIP and data.Rdata? >> > > Totally agree, and easily solved by eg adding ignore.case = TRUE to the > grep() call. > > >> A quick scan of the R source code suggests that R is also working with >> the following filename extensions (using various case styles): >> >> What about all the other file extensions that we know for sure are binary? >> > > If the default isn't changed, doesn't it make more sense to actually turn > the logic around? Text files that are downloaded over the internet are > almost always .txt, .csv, or a few other extensions used for text data . > Those are actually the only files where some people with very old Windows > programs for text processing can get into trouble. So instead of adding > every possible binary extension, one can put "wb" as default and change to > "w" if it is a text file instead of the other way around. That would not > change the concept of the behaviour, but ensures that the function doesn't > fail to detect a binary file. Not detecting a text file is far less of a > problem, as not converting the line endings doesn't destruct the file. > > Cheers > Joris > > -- > Joris Meys > Statistical consultant > > Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling > Ghent University > Coupure Links 653, B-9000 Gent (Belgium) > <https://maps.google.com/?q=Coupure+links+653,%C2%A0B-9000+Gent,%C2%A0Belgium&entry=gmail&source=g> > > ----------- > Biowiskundedagen 2017-2018 > http://www.biowiskundedagen.ugent.be/ > > ------------------------------- > Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
