Create a .tar.gz file from serialized content string with R

Question

Given a .tar.gz file on my hard disk, would like to create that exact file, but with R code alone (eg with the help of serialization). The goal is to not refer to the file itself, but to generate a plain text variable containing the content of the file and after that to write the file to the file system. I thought about the following:

1. Take the base64 string of the file (base64 serialization).
2. Write it to the file system as a binary file.

But the following code generates an empty file:

zzfil <- tempfile("testfile")
zz <- file(zzfil, "wb")
file_content <- "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"
writeBin(RCurl::base64Decode(file_content), zz)
close(zz)
file.rename(from = zzfil, to = paste0(zzfil,".tar.gz")) 

How should I serialize the file instead? Ie how should I fill the functions file_to_string and string_to_file ?

file_to_string <- function(input_file){
  # Return a serialized string of input_file

}

string_to_file <- function(input_string){
  # Return content to write to a file

}

original_file <- "original.tar.gz"
zzfil <- tempfile("copy")
zz <- file(zzfil, "wb")
file_content <- file_to_string(original_file)
writeBin(string_to_file(file_content), zz)
close(zz)
file.rename(from = zzfil, to = paste0(zzfil,".tar.gz"))

Answer 1

For me, using R 3.4.4 on platform x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, RCurl version 1.95-4.10, the example code produces a non-empty file that can be read back in using readBin , so i can't reproduce your empty file issue.

But that's not the main issue here.
Using writeBin does not achieve what you want to do: it's use case is to store an R-Object (a vector) in a binary format on the filesystem and read it back in with readBin ; not to read in a binary file, then manipulate it and save the new version or generate a binary file that is meant to be understood by anything else besides readBin .

In my humble opinion: R is probably not the right tool to do binary patches.