Solution to communicating with UDP and other interfaces (under Linux) using R

I'd spent hours with Google trying to find how to control a separate
software package from R via a UDP interface (I could run the package under a
"system" command, but that was too slow).  I finally figured out a way to
communicate with UDP through R, and it works fine (using the "system"
command) - it's also fast.

(1) install software "socat" (available on most of the Linux repositories).
It's potent software for communication stuff, btw.

(2) set up the UDP 'port' to communicate with (like in a separate software
package for passing commands and responses back and forth).

(3) use the "system" command to send messages - as an example:
system("echo \"quit\"| socat - UDP4-DATAGRAM:0.0.0.0:19004")

I haven't tried receiving data from that software yet... but according to
the writeup on socat, it should be no problem.
You can also use the socat software to redirect from one type of connection
to another.

(I'm studying R - both for programming/running 'real world' interfaces and
then doing the statistics on the data.)

Hope this helps someone - the (tiny) few messages I've found indicated that
it couldn't be done (they were old).  It can be done and rather simply.

Bob