From bbolker @ending from gm@il@com  Wed Oct 10 05:22:21 2018
From: bbolker @ending from gm@il@com (Ben Bolker)
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2018 23:22:21 -0400
Subject: [Rd] NEWS typos, download.file.Rd tweaks
Message-ID: <7c8e26d5-415a-2e14-b332-721898a99581@gmail.com>


  Some small changes (typo, punctuation fix) to the NEWS file, and some
suggested changes to download.file.Rd (I found some of the phrasing
awkward/hard to parse, and got carried away).  (I *think* .txt
attachments are OK on the list?)

  FWIW I started fixing the download.file man page because I went there
to understand/be horrified by the following (documented!) infelicity:
with the default settings (on Unix at least), failing to download what
is intended to be a new version of a file will wipe out the original,
leaving an empty file.  So, for example, a temporary network problem can
lead to a pipeline being unworkable (because a critical file has been
emptied) until the network comes back ...  I don't suppose there's any
chance this behaviour could be changed ... ??

> What happens to the destination file(s) in the case of error
     depends on the method and R version. Currently the ?"internal"?,
     ?"wininet"? and ?"libcurl"? methods will remove the file if there
     the URL is unavailable except when ?mode? specifies appending when
     the file should be unchanged.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/293/

 cheers
   Ben Bolker

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[Rd] NEWS typos, download.file.Rd tweaks
Ben Bolker