[R] Vectorize 'eol' characters

[Stefano Conti]

Dear R users,

When dumping an R matrix object into a file -- typically via the 'write.table' function -- the 'eol' option can be used to specify the end-of-line character(s) which should appear at the end of each row.

However the argument to 'eol' seems to be restricted to have length 1, whereas ideally I would like different rows to be written to file each with its own end character string.  For instance:

> test <- matrix(1:12, nrow=4); test
     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]    1    5    9
[2,]    2    6   10
[3,]    3    7   11
[4,]    4    8   12

> write.table(test, file="test.txt", sep=" ", eol=paste(" test", 1:4, "\n", sep=""))

> read.table(file="test.txt", sep=" ")
  V1 V2 V3 test1
1  1  5  9 test1
2  2  6 10 test1
3  3  7 11 test1
4  4  8 12 test1

whereas I would like the last column of the dump file to be "test1", "test2", "test3", "test4".  Is there a way this could be achieved?  With many thanks in advance for your help, kind regards,


--
Dr Stefano Conti
Statistics Unit (room #2A19)
Health Protection Services
HPA Colindale
61 Colindale Avenue
London NW9 5EQ, UK
tel: +44 (0)208-3277825
fax: +44 (0)208-2007868

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