R: Read whitespace-separated columns into a tibble

read_table {readr} | R Documentation

## Read whitespace-separated columns into a tibble

### Description

`read_table()` and `read_table2()` are designed to read the type of textual data where each column is separated by one (or more) columns of space.

`read_table2()` is like `read.table()`, it allows any number of whitespace characters between columns, and the lines can be of different lengths.

`read_table()` is more strict, each line must be the same length, and each field is in the same position in every line. It first finds empty columns and then parses like a fixed width file.

`spec_table()` and `spec_table2()` return the column specifications rather than a data frame.

### Usage

    read_table(
      file,
      col_names = TRUE,
      col_types = NULL,
      locale = default_locale(),
      na = "NA",
      skip = 0,
      n_max = Inf,
      guess_max = min(n_max, 1000),
      progress = show_progress(),
      comment = "",
      skip_empty_rows = TRUE
    )

    read_table2(
      file,
      col_names = TRUE,
      col_types = NULL,
      locale = default_locale(),
      na = "NA",
      skip = 0,
      n_max = Inf,
      guess_max = min(n_max, 1000),
      progress = show_progress(),
      comment = "",
      skip_empty_rows = TRUE
    )

### Arguments

`file` | Either a path to a file, a connection, or literal data (either a single string or a raw vector). Files ending in `.gz`, `.bz2`, `.xz`, or `.zip` will be automatically uncompressed. Files starting with `http://`, `https://`, `ftp://`, or `ftps://` will be automatically downloaded. Remote gz files can also be automatically downloaded and decompressed. Literal data is most useful for examples and tests. It must contain at least one new line to be recognised as data (instead of a path) or be a vector of greater than length 1. Using a value of `clipboard()` will read from the system clipboard.
`col_names` | Either `TRUE`, `FALSE` or a character vector of column names. If `TRUE`, the first row of the input will be used as the column names, and will not be included in the data frame. If `FALSE`, column names will be generated automatically: X1, X2, X3 etc. If `col_names` is a character vector, the values will be used as the names of the columns, and the first row of the input will be read into the first row of the output data frame. Missing (`NA`) column names will generate a warning, and be filled in with dummy names `X1`, `X2` etc. Duplicate column names will generate a warning and be made unique with a numeric suffix.
`col_types` | One of `NULL`, a `cols()` specification, or a string. See `vignette("readr")` for more details. If `NULL`, all column types will be imputed from the first 1000 rows on the input. This is convenient (and fast), but not robust. If the imputation fails, you'll need to supply the correct types yourself. If a column specification created by `cols()`, it must contain one column specification for each column. If you only want to read a subset of the columns, use `cols_only()`. Alternatively, you can use a compact string representation where each character represents one column: c = character i = integer n = number d = double l = logical f = factor D = date T = date time t = time ? = guess _ or - = skip By default, reading a file without a column specification will print a message showing what `readr` guessed they were. To remove this message, use `col_types = cols()`.
`locale` | The locale controls defaults that vary from place to place. The default locale is US-centric (like R), but you can use `locale()` to create your own locale that controls things like the default time zone, encoding, decimal mark, big mark, and day/month names.
`na` | Character vector of strings to interpret as missing values. Set this option to `character()` to indicate no missing values.
`skip` | Number of lines to skip before reading data.
`n_max` | Maximum number of records to read.
`guess_max` | Maximum number of records to use for guessing column types.
`progress` | Display a progress bar? By default it will only display in an interactive session and not while knitting a document. The display is updated every 50,000 values and will only display if estimated reading time is 5 seconds or more. The automatic progress bar can be disabled by setting option `readr.show_progress` to `FALSE`.
`comment` | A string used to identify comments. Any text after the comment characters will be silently ignored.
`skip_empty_rows` | Should blank rows be ignored altogether? i.e. If this option is `TRUE` then blank rows will not be represented at all. If it is `FALSE` then they will be represented by `NA` values in all the columns.

### See Also

`read_fwf()` to read fixed width files where each column is not separated by whitespace. `read_fwf()` is also useful for reading tabular data with non-standard formatting.

### Examples

    # One corner from http://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm
    massey <- readr_example("massey-rating.txt")
    cat(read_file(massey))
    read_table(massey)

    # Sample of 1978 fuel economy data from
    # http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/epadata/78data.zip
    epa <- readr_example("epa78.txt")
    cat(read_file(epa))
    read_table(epa, col_names = FALSE)

[Package readr version 1.4.0 Index]