This function and class allow us to work with C-level
FILE handles.
The intent is to be able to pass these to libcurl
as options so that it can read or write from or to the file.
We can also do this with R connections and specify callback functions
that manipulate these connections. But using
the C-level FILE handle is likely to be significantly faster for large
files.
The close method allows us to explicitly flush and close the file
from within R.
Usage
CFILE(filename, mode = "r")
Arguments
filename
the name of the file on disk
mode
a string specifying how to open the file, read or write, text or binary.
Details
This is a simple interface to the C routine fopen.
Value
An object of class CFILE which is
has a single slot name ref which is an external pointer
holding the address of the FILE object in C.