R help - Sep 2003 - File Reading Problem

?readBin  will do what you want.  If the file is really a set of lines, 
you could use readLines() followed by strsplit().

See also the R Data Import/Export manual.

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Jiming Yu wrote:
> Dear all,
>     I am trying to read characters byte by byte(in their ASCII codes) from
a
> file(already transferred from text file to a file of ASCII codes, by C
> language). I am using scan() function. But it seems that this is
impossible.
>     If I read data as 'character' type, data are read word by word,
> separated by spaces(though in default setting, sep=""). e.g. if a
file
> contains "This is a book.", Then it reads "This",
"is", "a", "book.", not
> "T", "h", "i", "s", etc(as I wanted
it to).
>     If I read data as 'integer' type from the file which contains
all ASCII
> codes of the original file, e.g. if a file contains "This is a
book.", Then
> it reads "T", " ", "i", " ",
"a", " " , "b", which are initials of all words
> and all spaces, not "T", "h", "i",
"s", etc(as I wanted it to).
>     If anybody has a solution, please let me know. I'd really
appreciate
> your help. Thank you very much!
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 14:26:43 -0700, "Jiming Yu"
<jimingyu at princeton.edu> wrote:
>Dear all,
>    I am trying to read characters byte by byte(in their ASCII codes) from a
>file
I was going to suggest using readBin, but there seems to be a bug:
> con <- file('c:/test.txt','rb')
> readBin(con,'c',15,1)
stack imbalance in internal readBin, 9 then 8stack imbalance in
.Internal, 8 then 7
stack imbalance in {, 6 then 5
NULL
Error: unprotect(): stack imbalance

This was in today's r-devel build for Windows, but the bug also shows
up in 1.7.1.  I'll look into it.

Duncan Murdoch

Dear all,
    I am trying to read characters byte by byte(in their ASCII codes) from a
file(already transferred from text file to a file of ASCII codes, by C
language). I am using scan() function. But it seems that this is impossible.
    If I read data as 'character' type, data are read word by word,
separated by spaces(though in default setting, sep=""). e.g. if a file
contains "This is a book.", Then it reads "This",
"is", "a", "book.", not
"T", "h", "i", "s", etc(as I wanted it
to).
    If I read data as 'integer' type from the file which contains all
ASCII
codes of the original file, e.g. if a file contains "This is a book.",
Then
it reads "T", " ", "i", " ",
"a", " " , "b", which are initials of all words
and all spaces, not "T", "h", "i", "s",
etc(as I wanted it to).
    If anybody has a solution, please let me know. I'd really appreciate
your help. Thank you very much!
                Jiming



Jiming Yu
Information Sciences and Systems Group
Department of Electrical Engineering
Princeton University

Email:  jimingyu at princeton.edu
Office:  609-258-4634
Cell:     609-933-6850