[R] write.table vs. read.table and the argument "fill"

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Sun May 8 14:24:10 CEST 2011


On May 7, 2011, at 10:38 AM, Carl Witthoft wrote:

> Just wondering how come read.table lets you specify fill=TRUE for  
> ragged arrays, but so far as I can tell, no equivalent for  
> write.table?
>

I imagine the answer is something along the lines of ....read.table  
creates a rectangular structure and write.table outputs a rectangular  
structure, so they are congruent. If I wanted to accomplish writing a  
ragged list I would consider using lapply , paste,  and writeLines.


> Not a big deal, since I'm perfectly comfortable w/ write and scan  
> and the other file I/O goodies.  "A foolish inconsistency..."  and  
> all that.

-- 
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT



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