[R] Partially reading a file (particularly)

[Tobin, Jared]

The responses are much appreciated, thanks.

findstr works and saves a lot of time.  I didn't however have much
success with that exact code persay; I get an error message that I don't
understand, as follows:

> c1 <- read.fwf(pipe("findstr /b 5 my.file"), ...)
Error in readLines(con, n, ok, warn, encoding) : 
        'con' is not a connection
Error in close(file) : no applicable method for "close"

I did however have success with pipe using readLines, albeit in a very
clumsy fashion:

> c1 <- readLines(pipe("findstr /b 5 my.file"))
> write(c1, file="temp.dat")
> t1 <- read.fwf("temp.dat", ...)

Do you receive the same error message as above when using pipe with
read.fwf?

--

jared tobin, student research assistant
dept. of fisheries and oceans
tobinjr at dfo-mpo.gc.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendieck at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:51 PM
To: Charles C. Berry
Cc: Tobin, Jared; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] Partially reading a file (particularly)

On 5/29/07, Charles C. Berry <cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu> wrote:

On windows XP we can also use findstr which comes with Windows:

         res <- read.fwf( pipe( "findstr /b 5 my.file" ) , <other args>
)