Retrieve contents of a file from a remote host via SCP (Secure Copy)

This function allows us to retrieve the contents of a file from a remote host via SCP. This is done entirely within R, rather than a command line application and the contents of the file are never written to disc. The function allows the

Usage

scp(host, path, keypasswd = NA, user = getUserName(), rsa = TRUE,
     key = sprintf(c("~/.ssh/id_%s.pub", "~/.ssh/id_%s"),
                   if (rsa) "rsa" else "dsa"),
     binary = NA, size = 5000, curl = getCurlHandle(), ...)

Arguments

host: the name of the remote host or its IP address
path: the path of the file of interest on the remote host's file systems
keypasswd: a password for accessing the local SSH key. This is the passphrase for the key.
user: the name of the user on the remote machine
rsa: a logical value indicating whether to use the RSA or DSA key
key: the path giving the location of the SSH key.
binary: a logical value giving
size: an estimate of the size of the buffer needed to store the contents of the file. This is used to initialize the buffer and potentially avoid resizing it as needed.
curl: a curl handle (getCurlHandle) that is to be reused for this request and which potentially contains numerous options settings or an existing connection to the host.
...: additional parameters handed to curlPerform.

Details

This uses libcurl's facilities for scp. Use "scp" %in% curlVersion()$protocols to see if SCP is supported.

Value

Either a raw or character vector giving the contents of the file.

References

libcurl https://curl.se/

Author

Duncan Temple Lang

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
   x = scp("eeyore.ucdavis.edu", "/home/duncan/OmegaWeb/index.html",
           "My.SCP.Passphrase", binary = FALSE)
   x = scp("eeyore.ucdavis.edu", "/home/duncan/OmegaWeb/RCurl/xmlParse.bz2",
           "My.SCP.Passphrase")
   o = memDecompress(x, asChar = TRUE)
} # }