With the default mode "wb"
the file is downloaded in binary mode (see
download.file
), to prevent R from adding ^M
at line
ends. This is particularly relevant for Windows model executables, while the
chmod
switch is useful when downloading Linux executables.
This function can be convenient for downloading any file, including text
files. Data files in CSV or other text format can also be read directly into
memory using read.table
, read.taf
or similar functions, without
writing to the file system.