[R] scan and skip - without line breaks in the input file

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On UNIX/Linux:

	myData <- scan(pipe("tr '\\t' '\\n' < myfile"), skip = 3)

You might have to adjust this depending on your shell.  On Windows
there is a tr in Duncan Murdoch's Rtools.



On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Balzer Susanne <susanne.balzer at imr.no> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am trying to read in big amounts of data with scan. It's only one variable, numeric values, separated by tabs,.. and it's many of them. So I was thinking that I could use the skip option and read in 100000 values at a time - but skip doesn't work, probably because I don't have line breaks in the txt file. So any value specified for skip makes the scan function jump to the end of the file.
>
> Does anyone have a good idea? I would be extremely grateful.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Susanne Balzer
>
>
>
> ****************************
> Susanne Balzer
> PhD Student
> Institute of Marine Research
> N-5073 Bergen, Norway
> Phone: +47 55 23 69 45
> susanne.balzer at imr.no
> www.imr.no