R plots to a connection?

Question

Is there a way to have R plot to an in-memory object or connection, rather than a named file?

I would like to have a plotting server create many graphs without ever going to a file.

The Cairo package documents use of a connection, but it doesn't seem to work. What I would like to do is something like:

library(Cairo)
plot.to.var <- function(data) {
   tc = textConnection("output", "w")
   CairoPDF(tc)
   plot(data)
   dev.off()
   tc.close()
   output
}

When I do this, CairoPDF mentions a connection patch I can't find a reference to, that will allow me to do this, even though the documentation shows this working.

I have no particular desire to use Cairo, merely saw that the documentation mentioned this.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I don't think so; R does not have binary memory buffers. Cairo feature you mentioned needs recompilation of both R and package; trying to do this with plain R does not throw errors, but nothing is written neither to textConnection nor socket.
So I think the best idea will be to use ramdisk; if you still want to try the patch, see this.