From sfalcon at fhcrc.org  Thu May 31 23:12:26 2007
From: sfalcon at fhcrc.org (Seth Falcon)
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 14:12:26 -0700
Subject: [Rd] Possible changes to connections
In-Reply-To: <465DF4A3.9000507@vanderbilt.edu> (Jeffrey Horner's message of
	"Wed, 30 May 2007 17:03:15 -0500")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705301726400.11532@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
	<465DF4A3.9000507@vanderbilt.edu>
Message-ID: <m2tztspuit.fsf@ziti.local>

Hi,

One more comment on this thread...

Jeffrey Horner <jeff.horner at vanderbilt.edu> writes:

> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> When I originally implemented connections in R 1.2.0, I followed the model 
>> in the 'Green Book' closely.  There were a number of features that forced 
>> a particular implementation, and one was getConnection() that allows one 
>> to recreate a connection object from a number.
> [...]
>> Another issue is that the current connection objects can be saved and 
>> restored but refer to a global table that is session-specific so they lose 
>> their meaning (and perhaps gain an unintended one).
>> 
>> What I suspect is that very few users are aware of the Green Book 
>> description and so we have freedom to make some substantial changes
>> to the implementation.  Both issues suggest that connection objects should 
>> be based on external pointers (which did not exist way back in 1.2.0).
>
> Sounds great! I would also like to see the following interface (all or 
> in parts) added for working with connections from C. This is an update 
> to the patch I created here:
>
> http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=developers:r_connections_api

I wanted to voice a "me too" for wanting to see an interface added for
working with connections from C in package code.  There are a number
of places where this would be useful and provide cleaner solution than
what is possible today.

The proposed interface looks useful.

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | Computational Biology | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
http://bioconductor.org



[Rd] Possible changes to connections
Seth Falcon