[R] Reading sections of data files based on pattern matching

[Henrik Andersson]

I am about to write general functions to read the output of simulations 
models.

These model generate output files with different sections which I want 
to analyze plot etc.

Since this will be used many people at the department I wanted to make 
sure that will do this in the best way.

For instance I want to read a snippets of data from a text that look 
like this.
-------------------------------
Lots of stuff
...
@@Start Values@@
	Column1 Column2 Column3 ...
Row1	1	2	3 ...
...
@@End Values@@

More stuff
...
@@Start OtherValues@@
	Column1 Column2 Column3 ...
Row1	1	2	3 ...
...
@@End OtherValues@@


I looked in the help files and found grep which operates on character 
strings, do I have to like this then?

1. Read file with readLines("foo.txt")
2. grep this object for the start and end of each section ->startline & 
stopline
3. Read the file again with 
read.table("foo.txt",skip=startline,nrows=stoplin-startline)

Or is there a more beautiful way?

Cheers,
---------------------------------------------
Henrik Andersson
Netherlands Institute of Ecology -
Centre for Estuarine and Marine Ecology
P.O. Box 140
4400 AC Yerseke
Phone: +31 113 577473
h.andersson at nioo.knaw.nl
http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/ppages/handersson