Cran Extractor

To pull the package and description data, run this command:

$ ./cran.rb

The package number limit can be changed at variable MAX_PACKAGES in the cran.rb script

What the cran.rb script does:

1. Pull the content of the https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/PACKAGES
2. Remove/join multiline that begins with space
3. Parse/put all fields into hash
4. Pull each files/packages from https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/*.tar.gz
5. Extract the DESCRIPTION information and parse/put them all into hash
6. Save the hash to a file called "cran.marshal"

To read back/display the hash from cran.marshal:

$ ./readpackages.rb

To schedule the run as cronjob, add this line into the crontab:

0 12 * * * /mypath/cran.rb >/mypath/cran.log 2>&1