Well, it's too complicated for me! Here are what I would do (limited 
since I'm still a newbie)

1) the syntax seems correct, it should work. The problem is somewhere 
else, coming from your own file. Did you try skipping the colClasses 
argument? To see how it looks like... If you can import it that way, try 
str(x) to see what you have. It might help you.
2) I've never had that much data to import, and for me read.table works 
well.

You might want to wait for the experts!

Ivan

Le 2/11/2010 17:14, Johan Jackson a écrit :
> Hi Ivan,
>
> Thanks for the reply. Damn IT! My original post was screwed up. HERE 
> is what I did:
>
> x <- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep('raw',600000))
> #returns error:  no method or default for coercing "character" to "raw"
>
>  I've read the ?read.table and the colClasses argument. I'm still unclear:
>
> 1) colClasses is a character vector, is that right? That seems to be 
> what the help says, but I get an error when I do the above.
>
> 2) what is the most efficient way to read in huge amounts of data? In 
> the past I found that scan() and readLines() were slower than read.table.
>
> Thanks,
>
> JJ
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Ivan Calandra 
> <ivan.calandra@uni-hamburg.de <mailto:ivan.calandra@uni-hamburg.de>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Hi!
>
>     |"colClasses|       character. A vector of classes to be assumed
>     for the
>     columns."
>     I'm not an R expert and I don't know what your "flat file raw" is, but
>     the colClasses argument is to define whether the column will be
>     treated
>     as containing "factors", "logical", "integer" etc...
>     For more on read.table, read the manual "R Data Import/Export"
>     available
>     on the R-project website.
>
>     I don't know if it helps, but I hope it does!
>
>     Ivan
>
>     Le 2/11/2010 16:36, Johan Jackson a écrit :
>     > Hi all,
>     >
>     > First off, it is surprising that there are no examples of how to use
>     > read.table() under ?read.table !
>     >
>     > I am trying to read in a flat file of type 'raw'. It has 1000
>     rows and 600K
>     > columns. I have the RAM to accomplish this, but can't get the
>     data into R
>     > using read.table:
>     >
>     > x<- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep(,600000))
>     > #returns error:  no method or default for coercing "character"
>     to "raw"
>     >
>     > Then I thought that maybe the colClasses vector needed to
>     actually *be* the
>     > mode needed (here's where an example under ?read.table would help):
>     >
>     > x<- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep(as.raw(1),600000))
>     >
>     > I waited on the latter command for a couple of hours before
>     killing the
>     > process. What should the colClasses argument be?
>     >
>     > Should I be using another method to read the data into R? Previous
>     > experience using scan() and readLines() showed that read.table()
>     was faster,
>     > at least for those examples, so I've stopped trying to use those
>     other
>     > functions.
>     >
>     > Thank you,
>     >
>     > JJ
>     >
>     >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>     >
>     > ______________________________________________
>     > R-help@r-project.org <mailto:R-help@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.
>     >
>     >
>
>            [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
>     ______________________________________________
>     R-help@r-project.org <mailto:R-help@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
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>
>

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