R: Counts the number of lines in a text file

countLines {R.utils} | R Documentation

## Counts the number of lines in a text file

### Description

Counts the number of lines in a text file by counting the number of occurrences of platform-independent newlines (CR, LF, and CR+LF [1]), including a last line with neither. An empty file has zero lines.

### Usage

    ## Default S3 method:
    countLines(file, chunkSize=5e+07, ...)

### Arguments

`file` | A `connection` or a pathname.
`chunkSize` | The number of bytes read in each chunk.
`...` | Not used.

### Details

Both compressed and non-compressed files are supported.

### Value

Returns an non-negative `integer`.

### Author(s)

Henrik Bengtsson

### References

[1] Page Newline, Wikipedia, July 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline

### Examples

    pathname <- system.file("NEWS", package="R.utils");
    n <- countLines(pathname);
    n2 <- length(readLines(pathname));
    stopifnot(n == n2);

[Package R.utils version 2.7.0 Index]