[R] Mayday ! Needing urgent help about writing results to a file

[Gavin Simpson]

On Fri, 2006-11-17 at 01:39 -0800, Marc Feuerstein wrote:
> Hey listmembers,
> I am desperately trying to write a data frame to a file. Not in CSV,
> but as they "appear" on the screen (nice, easy to read tables). I've
> read that the sink function is the way to go.
> 
> I have tried the following code inside a function. 
> 
> sink("ABC.txt")
> MyFrameA
> MyFrameB
> sink()
> 
> It gives the result I need when I use it outside a function, but when
> I use it *inside* a function I wrote, it creates an empty file. I want
> to pull my hair out !

Are you forgetting to *print* MyFrameA etc.? It works fine for me in a
function if you print the object:

foo <- function(x, file = "temp.file.txt")
{
	sink(file = file)
	print(x)
	sink(file = NULL)
}

> dat <- as.data.frame(matrix(rnorm(10), ncol = 5))
> names(dat) <- LETTERS[1:5]
> rownames(dat) <- letters[1:2]
> foo(dat)

G

> 
> What should I do so that, when the function ends, I have a text file
> called ABC.txt having MyFrameA and MyFrameB in the same file. 
> 
> Thanks so much (in advance) to help me out on this one ! I'm sure some
> of you already encountered such a situation.
> 
> Marc.
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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Gavin Simpson                     [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522
ECRC                              [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565
UCL Department of Geography
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