If the records are always of the form: number,"...","...",number
where ... may contain commas but not double quotes then here is a kludgy solution. Perhaps its sufficient? # scan in data using " as the delimiter and keep first and last fields s <- scan("clipboard",skip=1,what=list("",NULL,NULL,NULL,""),sep="\"") # remove commas from fields, convert to numeric and reshape into matrix matrix(as.numeric(sub(",","",unlist(s))),nc=2) --- Paul Bayer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Dear R-helpers, > >I have to read some large csv-files into R (30 - 100MB). >Since reading with read.csv leads to "memory exhausted", I tried >with scan(), skipping not needed columns by NULL-elements in >"what". > >When these skipped elements are quoted strings with commata inside, >R interprets each such quoted comma as element separator >leading to wrong records in the rest of the line. > >A little test will show what I mean. I have the following "test.csv": > >"col.A","col.B","col.C","col.D" >1,"quoted string","again, again again",123 >2,"nice quotes, isnt it","you got it",456 > >First I read all elements: > > > tst <- scan("test.csv", what=list(a=0,b="",c="",d=0), sep=",", skip=1) >Read 2 records > > tst >$a >[1] 1 2 > >$b >[1] "quoted string" "nice quotes, isnt it" > >$c >[1] "again, again again" "you got it" > >$d >[1] 123 456 > >Everything is fine. Then I try to skip the 2nd column by giving b=NULL: > > > tst <- scan("test.csv", what=list(a=0,b=NULL,c="",d=0), sep=",", >skip=1) >Read 2 records >Warning message: >number of items read is not a multiple of the number of columns > > tst >$a >[1] 1 2 > >$b >NULL > >$c >[1] "again, again again" " isnt it,you got it,456\n\n\n" > >$d >[1] 123 NA > > > > >I got garbage. >Isn't this a bug? >Or did I something wrong? >Is there a workaround? > >Thank you all, > >Paul Bayer, >Feldafing, Germany > >______________________________________________ >[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list >https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help