From sfalcon at fhcrc.org  Tue Jan  3 21:51:18 2006
From: sfalcon at fhcrc.org (Seth Falcon)
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:51:18 -0800
Subject: [Rd] Enhancement request: anonymous connections
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0601011752100.29194@gannet.stats> (Brian Ripley's
	message of "Sun, 1 Jan 2006 18:05:40 +0000 (GMT)")
References: <m2mzimc9zj.fsf@fhcrc.org> <43B1EE08.4090003@stats.uwo.ca>
	<m2ek3xcm32.fsf@fhcrc.org> <43B810BF.8080309@stats.uwo.ca>
	<Pine.LNX.4.61.0601011752100.29194@gannet.stats>
Message-ID: <m264p1dohl.fsf@ziti.local>

On  1 Jan 2006, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk wrote:
> 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.  

Yes, p. 384 of my copy of the Green Book explains:

    Once a connection has been opened, the evaluation manager keeps it
    open until it is explicitly closed, or the session ends, even if
    no corresponding S connection object exists.

What are some advantages of this design choice?  

> The OP has never told us what anonymous connections' are, but it is
> quite possible that his unstated ideas are incompatible with the
> documentation.

Yep.  The current behavior is as documented in the Green Book and yes,
the enhancement I would like is incompatible with that documentation.

What is an anonymous connection?  Well, really what I want is for the
evaluation manager to clean up connections that have no corresponding
S connection objects referring to them.  Then the code examples that
are part of this thread would work.


+ seth



[Rd] Enhancement request: anonymous connections
Seth Falcon