[R] reading and analyzing a text file

[DAVID ARTETA GARCIA]

Dear list,

I have a text file from a scanner that includes 20 lines of text  
(scanner settings) before it actually starts showing the readings in a  
tabular format (headings are ID, intensity, background and few others).

I am a biologist with some experience using R and my question is if it  
is possible to read this file into an R workspace and store the actual  
readings in a dataframe, avoiding the text at the begining. It seems  
to me that this is not the actual purpose of R, but maybe someone can  
point me to a method for doing this. Do I need to parse the file with  
some other programming language? is it possible to link, say, Perl or  
C++ with R to automate the reading and the analysis of such files? The  
aim is to be able to automate this analysis since these files are our  
routine experimental output.

Thanks for your help,

D.