[R] Reading fixed column format

[Barry Rowlingson]

Michael Kubovy wrote:

> Please consider saving your data in a way that will make it easier to
>  read into R. No program can read every dataset.

going back to the original post, there seems to be a couple of hanging 
questions:

> None of these seem to read non-coniguous variables from columns; or 
> may be I am missing something. "read.fwf" is not meant for large
> files according to a post in the archives. Thanks for the pointers. I
> have read the R data input and output. Anupam.

  First up, how 'large' is your 'large ASCII file'? How many rows and 
columns?

  Secondly, what are 'non-contiguous' variables?

  Perhaps if you posted the first few lines and columns of the file then 
we might get an idea of how to read it in.

Barry