[R] List of lists? Data frames? (Or other data structures?)

[Aleksey Naumov]

Try str(aaa) after running scan() and read.table():

scan() returns a list of vectors, while read.table() returns a data frame.
The extra time taken by read.table() (in my tries read.table is 1.2-1.5
times slower than scan, consistent with your numbers) must be due to
binding the vectors into a data frame (checking that they have the same
length, etc). 
In my runs trying to convert the result of scan() into a data frame (with
as.data.frame(aaa)) took about the same time as read.table(), so if you
want a data frame in the end, read.table() may be best.

Aleksey

On Thu, 1 May 2003, R A F wrote:

> For what it's worth, I followed the suggestion of using colClasses:
> 
> cls <- c( "numeric", "character", "numeric", "numeric", "numeric" )
> system.time( bbb <- read.table( "file", colClasses = cls ) )
> 
> Here're the results from three tries:
> 8.21 0.06 8.28 0.00 0.00
> 8.94 0.10 9.10 0.00 0.00
> 8.55 0.06 8.69 0.00 0.00
> 
> I also did
> system.time( aaa <- scan( "file", list( 0, "", 0, 0, 0 ) ) three
> times:
> 
> 6.46 0.04 6.59 0.00 0.00
> 5.27 0.04 5.33 0.00 0.00
> 5.14 0.05 5.19 0.00 0.00
> 
> By the way, I did the experiment in the order bbb, aaa, bbb, aaa,
> bbb, aaa.
> 
> So it appears that read.table is still a little slower -- but it could
> be just me doing something wrong.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> >From: "R A F" <raf1729 at hotmail.com>
> >To: p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk
> >CC: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch, rpeng at stat.ucla.edu, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> >Subject: Re: [R] List of lists? Data frames? (Or other data structures?)
> >Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 12:20:57 +0000
> >
> >Ah, thanks!
> >
> >(It's not that I didn't reading it -- I didn't understand it and so
> >I thought that it'd be easier to ask again.  Thanks very much!)
> >
> >>From: Peter Dalgaard BSA <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk>
> >>To: "R A F" <raf1729 at hotmail.com>
> >>CC: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk, rpeng at stat.ucla.edu, r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> >>Subject: Re: [R] List of lists? Data frames? (Or other data structures?)
> >>Date: 01 May 2003 14:19:32 +0200
> >>
> >>You're not taking Brian's hint!:
> 
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