Using R to download gzipped data file, extract, and import data
Solution 1:
I like Ramnath's approach, but I would use temp files like so:
tmpdir <- tempdir()
url <- 'http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/databases/tic/tic.tar.gz'
file <- basename(url)
download.file(url, file)
untar(file, compressed = 'gzip', exdir = tmpdir )
list.files(tmpdir)
The list.files()
should produce something like this:
[1] "TicDataDescr.txt" "dictionary.txt" "ticdata2000.txt" "ticeval2000.txt" "tictgts2000.txt"
which you could parse if you needed to automate this process for a lot of files.
Solution 2:
Here is a quick way to do it.
# create download directory and set it
.exdir = '~/Desktop/tmp'
dir.create(.exdir)
.file = file.path(.exdir, 'tic.tar.gz')
# download file
url = 'http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/databases/tic/tic.tar.gz'
download.file(url, .file)
# untar it
untar(.file, compressed = 'gzip', exdir = path.expand(.exdir))