[R] different file types

[Jason Turner]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 03:39:36PM -0500, janet rosenbaum wrote:
> 
> Hi.  I am writing a program to read in different types of files from a
> GUI.  While it's easy to read different types of text files, I am
> stymied how to make R execute the input.  
> 
> Ideally I could get the command from input and dereference it like
> 	`command`(filename)
> where command would be read.dta or read.table or read.xport or any of 
> the similar commands.

> Also, is there a way to make associative arrays?  
> It would be nice to be able to get the format from input and then have
> 	command<-array[format]

Not that I'm aware of.  Since R is a rather nice functional
programming language,  there are often other ways to do the same
thing.  I'd have the front end supply a format (table, csv, xport,
etc), then use paste() and match.fun(), e.g. 

file.format <- "csv" #this would be supplied by the gui

readCmd <- paste(sep=".","read",file.format)
readFunc <- match.fun(readCmd)
readFunc(file)

Cheers

Jason
-- 
Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd.
64-21-343-545
jasont at indigoindustrial.co.nz