Hi Stephen, Maybe it is just me, but I am not clear what your question is. scan() is a function with a variety of arguments. When these are not explicitly named, they go in order. So, scan(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is equivalent to scan(file = 1, what = 2, nmax = 3, n = 4, sep = 5), which is clearly nonsense. If you are wondering what a use of scan is, here is an example where input to the console is scan()ed and assigned to 'x'.
> x <- scan() 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6: Read 5 items > x [1] 1 2 3 4 5 HTH, Josh On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 8:42 PM, Stephen Liu <sati...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Hi folks, > > > I followed an online example to input data; > >> x = scan(1,2,3,4,5) > Error in scan(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) : > either specify 'nmax' or 'n', but not both. > > It can't work. > > >> x = c(1,2,3,4,5) >> x > [1] 1 2 3 4 5 > > It works. > > > Whether "scan" is replaced with "c" ? > >> ?c > ..... > Usage: > c(..., recursive=FALSE) > > > TIA > > > B.R. > Stephen L > > > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology University of California, Los Angeles http://www.joshuawiley.com/ ______________________________________________ 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.