[R] Inserting blank lines into a file

[Greg Snow]

There is a basic interface to gnuplot in the TeachingDemos package (see the help on gp.open), but it does not do surface plots (yet, I am working on that).

One way to create the datafile with gaps is:

        tmp <- 'nameofdatafile.txt'
        tmp2 <- data.frame(x=x, y=y, z=z)
        tmp2 <- tmp2[ order(x,y), ]
        tmp3 <- split(tmp2, tmp2$x)
        con <- file(tmp, open='w')
        sapply( tmp3, function(d) {
                write.table( d, con, row.names=FALSE, col.names=FALSE )
                cat( "\n", file=con )
                } )
        close(con)

Hope this helps,

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Zhou Fang
> Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:01 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Inserting blank lines into a file
>
> Hi,
>
> Should be a quickie:
>
> I want to make a datafile in R for plotting in gnuplot (which has
> friendlier 3D plotting options, as far as I can tell). So, I want to
> create a file with contents along the lines of
>
> #File begins
> 0 0 10
> 0 13 10
> 0.2 2 10
>
> 1 0 10.12
> 1 1 5
> 1 2 10
>
> 2 0 10
> 2 1 1
> 2 2 10
>
> It's probably fairly easy to write the space-separated numbers with
> write.table, sink, or similar. But what I haven't figured out is how
> to get the blank lines between data blocks that I need.
>
> Does anyone know?
>
> Zhou
>
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