This may be possible using the skip argument in read.table. It's hard to know w/o a bit more info on the structure of the text file.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of DAVID ARTETA GARCIA > Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 10:31 AM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: [R] reading and analyzing a text file > > Dear list, > > I have a text file from a scanner that includes 20 lines of > text (scanner settings) before it actually starts showing the > readings in a tabular format (headings are ID, intensity, > background and few others). > > I am a biologist with some experience using R and my question > is if it is possible to read this file into an R workspace > and store the actual readings in a dataframe, avoiding the > text at the begining. It seems to me that this is not the > actual purpose of R, but maybe someone can point me to a > method for doing this. Do I need to parse the file with some > other programming language? is it possible to link, say, Perl or > C++ with R to automate the reading and the analysis of such files? The > aim is to be able to automate this analysis since these files > are our routine experimental output. > > Thanks for your help, > > D. > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > ______________________________________________ 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.
