Possible changes to connections

Prof Brian Ripley a ?crit :

When I originally implemented connections in R 1.2.0, I followed the model
in the 'Green Book' closely.  There were a number of features that forced
a particular implementation, and one was getConnection() that allows one
to recreate a connection object from a number.

I'm currently using connections (socketConnection(), etc)
and I first want to *thank you* for this nice work.
(imho, it's so much simpler than the underlying C/C++ stuff.)

I am wondering if anyone makes use of this, and if so for what?

I use getConnection().
In the context in which I use it, the number of the connection is
known a priori.

So getConnection() is an easy way to access to the connection
for the functions which need to.
I do not however pretend this is the best way to proceed.

It would seem closer to the R philosophy to have connection objects that
get garbage collected when no R object refers to them.  This would allow
for example
... readLines(con <- gzfile("foo.gz")); close(con)
which is a little awkward but more importantly seems little understood.

There could be/was the same debate in C/C++.
That's may be just a matter of education about not forgetting
to close previously opened doors !