utils (version 3.3)

read.socket: Read from or Write to a Socket

Description

read.socket reads a string from the specified socket, write.socket writes to the specified socket. There is very little error checking done by either.

Usage

read.socket(socket, maxlen = 256L, loop = FALSE)
write.socket(socket, string)

Arguments

socket

a socket object.

maxlen

maximum length (in bytes) of string to read.

loop

wait for ever if there is nothing to read?

string

string to write to socket.

Value

• read.socket returns the string read as a length-one character vector.

  write.socket returns the number of bytes written.

See Also

close.socket, make.socket

Examples

finger <- function(user, host = "localhost", port = 79, print = TRUE)
{
    if (!is.character(user))
        stop("user name must be a string")
    user <- paste(user,"r
")
    socket <- make.socket(host, port)
    on.exit(close.socket(socket))
    write.socket(socket, user)
    output <- character(0)
    repeat{
        ss <- read.socket(socket)
        if (ss == "") break
        output <- paste(output, ss)
    }
    close.socket(socket)
    if (print) cat(output)
    invisible(output)
}
finger("root")  ## only works if your site provides a finger daemon