Dear Tim You can use
cat("TITLE extra line", "235 335 535 735", "115 135 175", file="ex.data", sep="\n") cn.x <- file("ex.data", open="r") a <- scan(cn.x, skip=1, n=2, sep = " ") > Read 2 items a > [1] 235 335 b <- scan(cn.x, n=2, sep = " ") > Read 2 items b > [1] 535 735 c <- scan(cn.x, n=2, sep = " ") > Read 2 items c > [1] 115 135 d <- scan(cn.x, n=1, sep = " ") > Read 1 items d > [1] 175 Regards, Christoph Buser -- Christoph Buser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Seminar fuer Statistik, LEO C11 ETH (Federal Inst. Technology) 8092 Zurich SWITZERLAND phone: x-41-1-632-5414 fax: 632-1228 http://stat.ethz.ch/~buser/ Tim Howard writes: > R gurus, > > My use of scan() seems to be dropping the first digit of sequential > scans on a connection. It looks like it happens only within a line: > > > cat("TITLE extra line", "235 335 535 735", "115 135 175", > file="ex.data", sep="\n") > > cn.x <- file("ex.data", open="r") > > a <- scan(cn.x, skip=1, n=2) > Read 2 items > > a > [1] 235 335 > > b <- scan(cn.x, n=2) > Read 2 items > > b > [1] 35 735 > > c <- scan(cn.x, n=2) > Read 2 items > > c > [1] 115 135 > > d <- scan(cn.x, n=1) > Read 1 items > > d > [1] 75 > > > > Note in b, I should get 535, not 35 as the first value. In d, I should > get 175. Does anyone know how to get these digits? > > The reason I'm not scanning the entire file at once is that my real > dataset is much larger than a Gig and I'll need to pull only portions of > the file in at once. I got readLines to work, but then I have to figure > out how to convert each entire line into a data.frame. Scan seems a lot > cleaner, with the exception of the funny character dropping issue. > > Thanks so much! > Tim Howard > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html