library(RCurl)
x = "/mypath/thefile.txt"


y = read.fwf(scp(host = 'myhost.place', path = q,
          user= "myusername", password = "mypass", binary = FALSE),
          widths = c(-1, 9, -42, 4), colClasses = c("character", "character"),
          col.names = c("Var1", "Var2"))

a = "/myotherpath/someSASfile.sas7bdat"

b = read_sas(scp(host = 'myhost.place, path = a,
          user= "myusername", password = "mypass", binary = TRUE))