Why does my download.file fail to complete?

Question

I was trying to retrieve dozens of files from a website (addresses listed at urls ) with the following code

 L <- lapply(urls, read.xls, sheet=1,header=T,skip=1,perl="C:/perl/bin/perl.exe",row.names=NULL)

But after a few successful downloads I kept receiving this error:

    Trying URL 'http://www.xyz.com'
Error in download.file(xls, tf, mode = "wb") : 
  cannot open URL 'http://www.xyz.com'
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file(xls, tf, mode = "wb") :
  cannot open: HTTP status was '0 (nil)'
Error in file.exists(tfn) : invalid 'file' argument

Why am I getting this error?

Answer 1

The error is caused by the default timeout option, which is set to its default of 60 seconds.

You can retrieve it by calling:

getOption("timeout")

To change it you simply run options(timeout = X) , where X is your desired timeout in seconds.