Hi David, That looks magic and works - if and only if you keep the file connection open. Cool, that was the hint I needed!
> scan("myfile.txt", nmax=10) will always give you the first 10 items, obviously. However, I did the workaround with tr under unix now and changed all the tabs into line breaks (thanks @Claudia Beleites). But good to know that scan also does the job. Thanks again, Susanne -----Opprinnelig melding----- Fra: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsem...@comcast.net] Sendt: 27. februar 2010 18:46 Til: Balzer Susanne Kopi: r-help@r-project.org help Emne: Re: SV: [R] scan and skip - without line breaks in the input file On Feb 27, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Balzer Susanne wrote: > Hei David, > > Thanks for your quick response, but unfortunately n and nmax alone > don't do the job. If I want to read items no. 100001 to 200000, the > n=100000 option will work, but skip=100000 (to NOT read the first > 100000 items) won't. > > Or with your example, > > scan(textConnection('1 2 3 4 5 6 7'), skip=3) will never work, while True. > > scan(textConnection('1 2 3 4 \n 5 \n 6 \n 7'), skip=3) will. But I > don't have line breaks in my file. Right. That was what I was trying to help you deal with. > > Is there no way to specify the character for a line break in scan / > read.table / etc.? Why are you fixating on linefeeds when you don't have any????? > closeAllConnections() > tc <- textConnection(paste(1:100, sep=" ", collapse=" ")) > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 10 items [1] 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 > scan(tc, nmax=10) Read 0 items numeric(0) -- David. > > Kind regards, > > Susanne > > > -----Opprinnelig melding----- > Fra: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsem...@comcast.net] > Sendt: 27. februar 2010 17:38 > Til: Balzer Susanne > Kopi: 'r-help@r-project.org' > Emne: Re: [R] scan and skip - without line breaks in the input file > > > On Feb 27, 2010, at 11:24 AM, Balzer Susanne wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> I am trying to read in big amounts of data with scan. It's only one >> variable, numeric values, separated by tabs,.. and it's many of >> them. So I was thinking that I could use the skip option and read in >> 100000 values at a time - but skip doesn't work, probably because I >> don't have line breaks in the txt file. So any value specified for >> skip makes the scan function jump to the end of the file. > > ?scan > > Without a working example it is hard to be sure, but it appears from a > rapid look at the help page that nmax is the argument you want. > >> scan(textConnection('1 2 3 4 5 6 7'), nmax=4) > Read 4 items > [1] 1 2 3 4 > > > (Ignores line-feeds) >> scan(textConnection('1 2 \n 3 4 5 6 7'), nmax=4) > Read 4 items > [1] 1 2 3 4 > > > -- > David. >> >> Does anyone have a good idea? I would be extremely grateful. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Susanne Balzer >> >> >> >> **************************** >> Susanne Balzer >> PhD Student >> Institute of Marine Research >> N-5073 Bergen, Norway >> Phone: +47 55 23 69 45 >> susanne.bal...@imr.no >> www.imr.no >> >> ______________________________________________ >> 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. > > David Winsemius, MD > Heritage Laboratories > West Hartford, CT > David Winsemius, MD Heritage Laboratories West Hartford, CT ______________________________________________ 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.