[R] Reading first line before using read.table()

[jim holtman]

try this:

> # test data
> temp <- tempfile()
> writeLines(text = "main title line
+ a b  # table header
+ 1 2
+ 3 4
+ 5 6", temp)
> input <- file(temp, 'r')  # connection for reading
>
> # read main
> main <- readLines(input, n = 1)
> rest <- read.table(input, header = TRUE)
> close(input)
>
> main
[1] "main title line"
> rest
  a b
1 1 2
2 3 4
3 5 6
>


On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Steve Lianoglou
<mailinglist.honeypot at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:27 PM, Hurr <hill0093 at umn.edu> wrote:
>> So far I have figured out that the following line
>> reads our time series files into R OK.
>> dtLs$dta <- read.table("C:/TryRRead/datFiles/JFeqfi4h.rta", header = TRUE,
>> sep = ",", colClasses = "character")
>> But I have to remove a main-title line so
>> that the first line is the column titles line.
>> This leads to having two sets of data files around when
>> we would rather have just one set.
>> How can I read just one line from the file to
>> get the main title in before using the read.table() call?
>
> Not sure I understand correctly, but would something like this do?
>
> R> title.line <- readLines('file.rta', n=1)
> R> dat <- read.table('file.rta', skip=1, header=TRUE, ...)
>
> -steve
>
> --
> Steve Lianoglou
> Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
>  | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
>  | Weill Medical College of Cornell University
> Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact
>
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-- 
Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.