read.fwf                package:utils                R Documentation

Read Fixed Width Format Files

Description:

     Read a "table" of *f*ixed *w*idth *f*ormatted data into a
     'data.frame'.

Usage:

     read.fwf(file, widths, header = FALSE, sep = "\t", as.is = FALSE,
              skip = 0, row.names, col.names, n = -1, ...)

Arguments:

    file: the name of the file which the data are to be read from.

          Alternatively, 'file' can be a 'connection', which will be
          opened if necessary, and if so closed at the end of the
          function call. 

  widths: integer vector, giving the widths of the fixed-width fields
          (of one line).

  header: a logical value indicating whether the file contains the
          names of the variables as its first line.

     sep: character; the separator used internally; should be a
          character that does not occur in the file.

   as.is: see 'read.table'.

    skip: number of initial lines to skip; see 'read.table'.

row.names: see 'read.table'.

col.names: see 'read.table'.

       n: the maximum number of records (lines) to be read, defaulting
          to no limit.

     ...: further arguments to be passed to 'read.table'.

Details:

     Fields that are of zero-width or are wholly beyond the end of the
     line in 'file' are replaced by 'NA'.

Value:

     A 'data.frame' as produced by 'read.table' which is called
     internally.

Author(s):

     Brian Ripley for R version: original 'Perl' by Kurt Hornik.

See Also:

     'scan' and 'read.table'.

Examples:

     ff <- tempfile()
     cat(file=ff, "123456", "987654", sep="\n")
     read.fwf(ff, width=c(1,2,3))    #> 1 23 456 \ 9 87 654
     unlink(ff)
     cat(file=ff, "123", "987654", sep="\n")
     read.fwf(ff, width=c(1,0, 2,3))    #> 1 NA 23 NA \ 9 NA 87 654
     unlink(ff)

