[R] A weird observation from using read.table

[Jun Ding]

Hi Everyone, 

Recently I got puzzled by the function read.table,
even though I have used it for a long time. 

I have such a file (tmp.txt, 2 rows and 3 columns,
with a space among columns):

1 2'-PDE 4
2 3'-PDE 5

if I do:
a = read.table("tmp.txt", header = F, quote = "")
a
  V1     V2 V3
1  1 2'-PDE  4
2  2 3'-PDE  5

Everything is fine. 

However, if I do:
a = read.table("tmp.txt", header = F)
a
  V1     V2 V3
1  2 3'-PDE  5
2  1 2'-PDE  4
3  2 3'-PDE  5

I know it is related to the "quote" as the default
includes '. But how can it get one more row in the
file? Thank you very much for your help in advance!

Jun