read.fwf {base}R Documentation

Read Fixed Width Format Files

Description

Read a ``table'' of fixed width formatted data into a data.frame.

Usage

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

Arguments

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

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)

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