[R] reading and analyzing a text file

[Doran, Harold]

This may be possible using the skip argument in read.table. It's hard to
know w/o a bit more info on the structure of the text file.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of DAVID ARTETA GARCIA
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 10:31 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] reading and analyzing a text file
> 
> Dear list,
> 
> I have a text file from a scanner that includes 20 lines of 
> text (scanner settings) before it actually starts showing the 
> readings in a tabular format (headings are ID, intensity, 
> background and few others).
> 
> I am a biologist with some experience using R and my question 
> is if it is possible to read this file into an R workspace 
> and store the actual readings in a dataframe, avoiding the 
> text at the begining. It seems to me that this is not the 
> actual purpose of R, but maybe someone can point me to a 
> method for doing this. Do I need to parse the file with some 
> other programming language? is it possible to link, say, Perl or  
> C++ with R to automate the reading and the analysis of such files? The
> aim is to be able to automate this analysis since these files 
> are our routine experimental output.
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> D.
> 
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