Sorry, misread :). Consider my remark as retracted...however.... It looks like it would be relatively simple to rewrite write.matrix a little bit to include rownames...the cat statement in the while loop of write.matrix could be changed to include a row name. To get he source code of write.matrix:
library(MASS) write.matrix # without the ()!! hope this helps more than my previous (useless) comment, Paul On 09/19/2011 02:37 PM, Mark Ebbert wrote: > I'm afraid I don't understand your response. As I mentioned in the original > question, write.table is way too slow and I need the row names in the file, > so setting row.names to FALSE wouldn't accomplish my goal, anyway. And > write.matrix doesn't have *any* options to include row names, which baffles > me since row names are part of a matrix object. > > I need the row names because an external program, which requires row names, > will be processing the files. I wound up using perl to fix the resultant file > from write.matrix, but I would love to hear an explanation as to why > write.matrix doesn't have an option to include row names, if you know. > > Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond. > > On Sep 19, 2011, at 1:49 AM, "Paul Hiemstra" <paul.hiems...@knmi.nl> wrote: > >> What do you want with the row names? The help file for ?write.table >> lists a row.names argument which can be set to FALSE. >> >> regards, >> Paul >> >> On 09/06/2011 02:58 PM, Mark Ebbert wrote: >>> Thank you for your help. >>> >>> The data is meant to be processed by a separate program that expects a >>> simple matrix with row and column names in ascii format. "write.matrix" >>> does exactly what I want except for the row names. It baffles me that this >>> is not an option… >>> >>> >>> On Sep 6, 2011, at 8:22 AM, Paul Hiemstra wrote: >>> >>>> On 09/06/2011 06:24 AM, Mark Ebbert wrote: >>>>> Dear R gurus, >>>>> >>>>> I am trying to write several large matrices (~ 1GB) to separate files. I >>>>> have learned that write.table is simply too slow for this task and was >>>>> attempting to use write.matrix, but write.matrix does not have the >>>>> ability to include row names in the output. Anyone know why that's the >>>>> case? I've seen a thread stating that write.matrix is the way to go for >>>>> large prints to files, but it doesn't do what I need it to. Since >>>>> write.matrix wasn't working I tried both sink and capture.output, but >>>>> then the output is printed to the file using the same 'width' >>>>> restrictions as the general "options(width=)" limit. >>>>> >>>>> Any ideas on how to print a large matrix with row names? I could write a >>>>> perl script to modify the files after the fact, but I shouldn't have to >>>>> do that. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for your help! >>>>> >>>>> Mark T. W. Ebbert >>>>> ______________________________________________ >>>>> 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. >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> What do you want with the data? If you want to store an R matrix on disk >>>> for later use in R, take a look at ?save. If it is for use in another >>>> programming language, I would write the matrix in binary format >>>> (?writebin). This saves a lot of space and prevents any (significant) >>>> rounding errors. It is probably also quite a bit faster. If you really >>>> need some more metadata (such as rownames), I would add a second text >>>> file which stores this information. Sort of a binary file plus a header, >>>> which is a quite common format for storing data. Maybe you can even find >>>> a standard binary format which you can use. But it is impossible to >>>> comment on this because you did not provide information as to what you >>>> want to do with the saved data. >>>> >>>> good luck! >>>> Paul >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Paul Hiemstra, Ph.D. >>>> Global Climate Division >>>> Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) >>>> Wilhelminalaan 10 | 3732 GK | De Bilt | Kamer B 3.39 >>>> P.O. Box 201 | 3730 AE | De Bilt >>>> tel: +31 30 2206 494 >>>> >>>> http://intamap.geo.uu.nl/~paul >>>> http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/paul-hiemstra/20/30b/770 >>>> >> >> -- >> Paul Hiemstra, Ph.D. >> Global Climate Division >> Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) >> Wilhelminalaan 10 | 3732 GK | De Bilt | Kamer B 3.39 >> P.O. Box 201 | 3730 AE | De Bilt >> tel: +31 30 2206 494 >> >> http://intamap.geo.uu.nl/~paul >> http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/paul-hiemstra/20/30b/770 >> -- Paul Hiemstra, Ph.D. Global Climate Division Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) Wilhelminalaan 10 | 3732 GK | De Bilt | Kamer B 3.39 P.O. Box 201 | 3730 AE | De Bilt tel: +31 30 2206 494 http://intamap.geo.uu.nl/~paul http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/paul-hiemstra/20/30b/770 ______________________________________________ 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.