whether to update database or to use the locally installed version
...
additional arguments to be used if update=TRUE)
Details
This function will return a dataframe of the NCBI taxonomy, using either a freshly updated version (if update=TRUE) or a loaded version of the locally installed version. An internet connection must be functional and several utilities must be available and if updating the database: curl, gunzip, tar, perl, mv, and possibly rm. If any of the required utilities are unavailable, the function will issue an error. If updating the database, the database will be assembled in the data directory of the ncbit package and temporary files will be removed in the process. The removal of temporary files can be prevented with rm=FALSE in the call to ncbit.
Value
A dataframe of class 'taxdump' is returned with the following elements:
id
a unique integer associated with the node
node
a string descriptor of the node
unique
a string describing the node
type
the type of datum (e.g., scientific name, common name, synonym, etc.)
Sayers EW, T Barrett, DA Benson, SH Bryant, K Canese, V Chetvernin, DM Church, M DiCuccio, R Edgar, S Federhen, M Feolo, LY Geer, M Hlemberg, Y Kapustin, D Landsman, DJ Lipman, TL Madden, DR Maglott, V Miller, I Mizrachi, J Ostell, KD Pruitt, GD Schuler, E Sequeira, ST Sherry, M Shumway, K Sirotkin, A Souvorov, G Starchenko, TA Tatusova, L Wagner, E yaschenko, and J Ye. 2009. Database resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Nucleic Acids Research 37:D5-15.
Benson DA, I Karsch-Mizrachi, DJ Lipman, J Ostell, and EW Sayers. 2009. GenBank. Nucleic Acids Research 37:D26-31.