title: Is there a way to avoid creating a temporary file in R?
body: <p>I have a database in which VCF files have been inserted as a blob variable. I am able to retrieve it without issue. However, I then need to pass it to some various functions (VariantAnnotation, etc.) that expect a VCF file name. Is there a way to "fake" a file object to pass to these functions if I already have all the data in a character string?</p>
  
  <p>I'm currently writing it out to a file so I can pass it on:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#x contains the entire vcf file as a character string
  
  temp_filename = tempfile(fileext = ".vcf")
  writeChar(x, temp_filename)
  testVcf = readVcf(temp_filename)
  unlink(temp_filename)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This works ok, but I would like to avoid the unnecessary file I/O if possible.</p>