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Reading .Dat Files in R

The document discusses how to read .dat files in R using the read.delim() function. It lists some commonly used arguments for read.delim() such as header, sep, skip, and as.is. It then provides an example of using read.delim() to read a .dat file from the internet and view the first few rows.

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Hemerson Pinheiro
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1K views2 pages

Reading .Dat Files in R

The document discusses how to read .dat files in R using the read.delim() function. It lists some commonly used arguments for read.delim() such as header, sep, skip, and as.is. It then provides an example of using read.delim() to read a .dat file from the internet and view the first few rows.

Uploaded by

Hemerson Pinheiro
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Ghement Statistical Consulting Company Ltd.

2014
Web: [Link] E-mail: info@[Link] Phone: 604-767-1250

Reading .dat files in R


To read .dat files in R, you can use the function [Link]() which comes with the
default R installation.

The function [Link]() is related to other functions for reading data files into R,
such as [Link]() or [Link](). As a consequence, [Link]() has arguments
(or options) that are similar to the arguments of [Link]() or [Link]().

Some of the most commonly used options for [Link]() include:

header = TRUE (if the .dat file includes a first row which lists the variable
names)
sep = "" (if the data columns present in the .dat file are separated by
white spaces)

OR

sep = "," (if the data columns present in the .dat file are separated by
commas)

OR

sep = "/t" (if the data columns present in the .dat file are separated by
tabs)

skip = 2 (if the first 2 rows of the .dat file include comments and must be
ignored by R)

[Link] = TRUE (to prevent R from automatically converting character


variables, such as date variables or ID variables, into factors)

[Link] = "NA" (if missing values are coded as NA in the .dat file, where

For more details on other options for [Link](), please refer to Rs help file for
this function:

?[Link]

Example:
The example below illustrates the use of [Link]() to read a .dat file pulled from
the Internet.

filename <- "[Link]

data <- [Link](filename, header = TRUE, sep="", skip=2, [Link]=TRUE)

head(data)

If the .dat file in this example were stored in our R working directory, we would read
it in R and then view it using the commands below:
data <- [Link]("CZ03_2009.dat", header = TRUE, sep="", skip=2, [Link]=TRUE)

View(data)

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