\Header{read.table}{data input}
\keyword{file}{read.table}
\begin{Usage}
\begin{verbatim}
read.table(file, header = FALSE, sep = "", row.names,
        col.names, as.is = FALSE, na.strings = "NA", skip = 0)
\end{verbatim}
\end{Usage}
\begin{Arguments}
\begin{ldescription}
\item[\texttt{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.
\item[\texttt{header}] a logical value indicating whether the file contains
the names of the variables as its first line.
\item[\texttt{sep}] the field separator character.  Values on
each line of the file are separated by this character.
\item[\texttt{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[\texttt{col.names}] a vector of optional names for the variables.
The default is to use \texttt{"V"} followed by the column number
\item[\texttt{as.is}] the default behavior of \texttt{read.table} is to convert
non-numeric variables to factors.  The variable \texttt{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[\texttt{na.strings}] a vector strings which are to be interpreted as \texttt{NA}
values.
\item[\texttt{skip}] the number of lines of the data file to skip before beginning
to read data.
\end{ldescription}
\end{Arguments}
\begin{Value}
A data frame containing a representation of the data in the file.
This function is the principal means of reading tabular data
into \R.\end{Value}
\begin{SeeAlso}
\texttt{\Link{scan}}, \texttt{\Link{read.fwf}} for \bold{f}ixed \bold{w}idth
\bold{f}ormatted input; \texttt{\Link{data.frame}}.\end{SeeAlso}

