R: Read Transaction Data

read.transactions {arules} | R Documentation

## Read Transaction Data

### Description

Reads a transaction data file from disk and creates a `transactions` object.

### Usage

    read.transactions(file, format = c("basket", "single"), sep = "",
                      cols = NULL, rm.duplicates = FALSE,
                      quote = "\"'", skip = 0,
                      encoding = "unknown")

### Arguments

`file` | the file name.
`format` | a character string indicating the format of the data set. One of `"basket"` or `"single"`, can be abbreviated.
`sep` | a character string specifying how fields are separated in the data file. The default (`""`) splits at whitespaces.
`cols` | For the ‘single’ format, `cols` is a numeric or character vector of length two giving the numbers or names of the columns (fields) with the transaction and item ids, respectively. If character, the first line of `file` is assumed to be a header with column names. For the ‘basket’ format, `cols` can be a numeric scalar giving the number of the column (field) with the transaction ids. If `cols = NULL`, the data do not contain transaction ids.
`rm.duplicates` | a logical value specifying if duplicate items should be removed from the transactions.
`quote` | a list of characters used as quotes when reading.
`skip` | number of lines to skip in the file before start reading data.
`encoding` | character string indicating the encoding which is passed to `readLines` or `scan` (see `Encoding`).

### Details

For ‘basket’ format, each line in the transaction data file represents a transaction where the items (item labels) are separated by the characters specified by `sep`. For ‘single’ format, each line corresponds to a single item, containing at least ids for the transaction and the item.

### Value

Returns an object of class `transactions`.

### Author(s)

Michael Hahsler and Kurt Hornik

### See Also

`transactions-class`

### Examples

    ## create a demo file using basket format for the example
    data <- paste(
      "# this is some test data",
      "item1, item2",
      "item1",
      "item2, item3",
      sep="\n")
    cat(data)
    write(data, file = "demo_basket")

    ## read demo data (skip comment line)
    tr <- read.transactions("demo_basket", format = "basket", sep=",", skip = 1)
    inspect(tr)

    ## create a demo file using single format for the example
    ## column 1 contains the transaction ID and column 2 contains one item
    data <- paste(
      "trans1 item1",
      "trans2 item1",
      "trans2 item2",
      sep ="\n")
    cat(data)
    write(data, file = "demo_single")

    ## read demo data
    tr <- read.transactions("demo_single", format = "single", cols = c(1,2))
    inspect(tr)

    ## tidy up
    unlink("demo_basket")
    unlink("demo_single")

[Package arules version 1.6-2 Index]