A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the File Folder
June 28, 2011
A few weeks ago I wrote a snippet of code that would do a 0700 download of new files from an archive that gets updated daily. One of those files is a Google Earth .kmz showing 60 hours of smoke forecasts. Today one of my colleagues emailed to ask why these files didn’t work, despite appearing to be the right size, format, etc. A good question! Further reading on download.file() indicated that I needed a mode = “wb” argument to indicate that the file was binary rather than text — no problem and no big deal.
However, in solving this little issue I realized that I am now an expert R user. Not because I can get R to do almost anything (except for sending an email from Outlook, but that’s another story), but because I understand the help files. I know how to read them, and where to look for the information I’m seeking. The number one complaint I hear from R students is that “the help files aren’t helpful”, which is totally true until you are versed enough in R to know how to read them. I don’t miss the learning curve.
