[R] Data separated by spaces, getting data into R using field lengths

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Lauri Nikkinen<lauri.nikkinen at iki.fi> wrote:
> I have a text file similar to this (separated by spaces):
>
> x <- "DF12 This is an example 1 This
> DF12 This is an 1232 This is
> DF14 This is 12334 This is an
> DF15 This 23 This is an example
> "
>
> and I know the field lengths of each variable (there is 5 variables in
> this data set), which are:
>
> varlength <- c(2, 2, 18, 5, 18)
>
> How can I import this kind of data into R, using the varlength
> variable as an field separator indicator?

?read.fwf

Read Fixed Width Format Files

Description:

     Read a table of *f*ixed *w*idth *f*ormatted data into a
     'data.frame'.

Usage:

     read.fwf(file, widths, header = FALSE, sep = "\t",
              skip = 0, row.names, col.names, n = -1,
              buffersize = 2000, ...)