[R] Changing a value in a particular row and column within a text file

Jim Lemon jim at bitwrit.com.au
Fri Dec 17 11:09:43 CET 2010


On 12/17/2010 08:13 PM, Mauricio Zambrano wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I need to change a value within a particular line of a plain text file
> with characters and numbers, and I haven't found any way of doing this
> by using R.
>
> What I have a is a file that doesn't have tabular data (so, I think
> that 'read.table' or 'read.delim' are not the right tools for this),
> but some text, and I now exactly the row that has to be modified and
> the columns within that row that have to be changed with a new
> numerical value.
>
> I don't' know any way of reading a text file line by line in R, and
> this is the only solution in R that I have figured out so far...
>
> Any idea about how can I do this ?.

Hi Mauricio,
Have a look at the readLines function. That will get the text into R, 
you can then use "sub" or something to change the offending line and 
then write the file out again.

Jim



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