The R Project SVN R

\name{read.table}
\title{data input}
\usage{
read.table(file, header = FALSE, sep = "", row.names,
        col.names, as.is = FALSE, na.strings = "NA", skip = 0)
}
\alias{read.table}
\arguments{
\item{file}{the name of the file which the data are to be read from.
    Each row of the table appears as one line of the file.  If it does
    not contain an \emph{absolute} path, the file name is
    \emph{relative} to the current working directory, \code{\link{getwd}()}.
}
\item{header}{a logical value indicating whether the file contains
the names of the variables as its first line.}
\item{sep}{the field separator character.  Values on
each line of the file are separated by this character.}
\item{row.names}{a vector of row names. This can be a vector
giving the actual row names, or a single number giving the
column of the table which contains the row names,
or character string giving the name of the table column
containing the row names.}
\item{col.names}{a vector of optional names for the variables.
The default is to use \code{"V"} followed by the column number}
\item{as.is}{the default behavior of \code{read.table} is to convert
non-numeric variables to factors.  The variable \code{as.is}
controls this conversion.  Its value is either a vector of logicals
(values are recycled if necessary), or a vector of numeric indices
which specify which columns should be left as character
strings.}
\item{na.strings}{a vector strings which are to be interpreted as
    \code{\link{NA}} values.}
\item{skip}{the number of lines of the data file to skip before beginning
to read data.}
}
\value{
    A data frame (\code{\link{data.frame}}) containing a representation of
    the data in the file.
    This function is the principal means of reading tabular data into \R.
}
\note{
    The implementation of \code{read.table} currently reads everything
    as character using \code{\link{scan}} and subsequently defines
    \code{"numeric"} or \code{\link{factor}} variables.

    This is quite memory consuming for files of thousands of records
    and may need larger memory, see \code{\link{Memory}}.
}
\seealso{
\code{\link{scan}}, \code{\link{read.fwf}} for \bold{f}ixed \bold{w}idth
\bold{f}ormatted input; \code{\link{data.frame}}.
}
\keyword{file}