R help - Nov 2009 - Automatizing Simulation in R

I have a question regarding automatizing simulation runs in R...

I have 500 external data sets for a simulation study that I would like 
to bring into R to analyze. They have the names data1.dat, data2.dat, 
..., dataN.dat

Is there a way to automatize the bringing in of these data sets in R 
using the read.table function within a looping cycle?

For example...

for (j in 1:N){
data_"j" = read.table("data"j".dat, header=F)

executable code
.
.
.
}

bring in the next data set.

SAS uses a ampersand "&" to automatize the process.

Example code:

data _NULL_;
   set final;
       filename out "C:\data&k..dat";
       file out;
       put variables;
run;

I would welcome any insight into how to address this issue.

Thank you.
Jeff Harring

-- 
**********************************************************
Jeffrey R. Harring, Assistant Professor
Department of Measurement, Statistics & Evaluation (EDMS)
1230 Benjamin Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1115

Phone: 	301.405.3630
Fax: 	301.314.9245
Email: 	harring at umd.edu
Web:  	http://www.education.umd.edu/EDMS/fac/Harring/webpage.html

On Nov 12, 2009, at 8:42 AM, Jeff Harring wrote:
> I have a question regarding automatizing simulation runs in R...
>
> I have 500 external data sets for a simulation study that I would  
> like to bring into R to analyze. They have the names data1.dat,  
> data2.dat, ..., dataN.dat
>
> Is there a way to automatize the bringing in of these data sets in R  
> using the read.table function within a looping cycle?
>
> For example...
>
> for (j in 1:N){
> data_"j" = read.table("data"j".dat, header=F)
Perhaps something like this:

for (j in 1:N){
assign(paste("data", j, sep="_") ,  read.table(
paste("data",j,".dat",
sep=""), header=F) }


Or even better might be to assign to a list which would augmentalize  
your future automatizabilationabilty:

flist <- list()
for (j in 1:N){
flist[[j]] <- read.table( paste("data",j,".dat",
sep=""), header=F) }

-- 
David
> executable code
> .
> .
> .
> }
>
> bring in the next data set.
>
> SAS uses a ampersand "&" to automatize the process.
>
> Example code:
>
> data _NULL_;
>  set final;
>      filename out "C:\data&k..dat";
>      file out;
>      put variables;
> run;
>
> I would welcome any insight into how to address this issue.
>
> Thank you.
> Jeff Harring
>
> -- 
> **********************************************************
> Jeffrey R. Harring, Assistant Professor
> Department of Measurement, Statistics & Evaluation (EDMS)
> 1230 Benjamin Building
-- 

David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT