[R] when to use textConnection ??

[Matt Shotwell]

Also, many R functions are designed to operate on R connections, to
input and output text. Alternatively, we may wish to provide the input
text as an R character vector, or output text to a character vector. The
textConnection makes a character vector look like a connection, so R
routines that operate on connections may also operate on character
vectors.

The textConnection also provides a mechanism for re-encoding text data,
although this may be more directly accomplished via the iconv function.
However, both methods are currently limited to encodings that do not
allow embedded null characters.

-Matt

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 13:06 -0400, Joshua Wiley wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> One useful case is when data is sent in an email.  For instance:
> 
> T1   T2     T3
> -0.24 -0.26 -0.67
> -1.58  0.04  0.14
> -1.21  1.55 -0.45
> 0.31  0.48 -1.39
> 
> One could read it in via
> 
> con <- textConnection("
> T1   T2     T3
> -0.24 -0.26 -0.67
> -1.58  0.04  0.14
> -1.21  1.55 -0.45
> 0.31  0.48 -1.39")
> 
> read.table(con, header = TRUE)
> 
> Often a text file can be read in directly with read.table() and the
> appropriate delimiter (e.g., sep = "\t" for tab, "," for comma, etc.).
>  Do you have a particular problem you are trying to solve or an
> application of textConnection() you are interested in?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Josh
> 
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:37 AM, skan <juanpide at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello.
> >
> > I don't uderstant when to use textConnection and when not.
> > Some examples do it, some not.
> > I've even seen something like
> >
> > con <- textConnection(rev(rev(ReadLines('data.txt'))[-(1:2]))
> > data <- read.table(con)
> > close(con)
> >
> > --
> > View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/when-to-use-textConnection-tp2327132p2327132.html
> > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Matthew S. Shotwell
Graduate Student 
Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Medical University of South Carolina