R help - Apr 2011 - read.table question #only need to change column names

Hi all,

I have a huge data set. All I want to do is to change the column names of
the it. So if I use read.table, I can read the data in and change colnames
and then write back, such as,

t <- read.table("a.txt", header = T, sep = "\t")

colnames(t)

colnames(t) <- c("....) # new column names

write.table(t, "a.txt", quote = F, sep = "\t", row.names =
F, col.names = T)

My question is that is there a better to do this without reading in and
write out data entirely?

Thanks.

Alex

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On Apr 1, 2011, at 10:00 AM, hongsheng wu wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a huge data set. All I want to do is to change the column  
> names of
> the it. So if I use read.table, I can read the data in and change  
> colnames
> and then write back, such as,
>
> t <- read.table("a.txt", header = T, sep = "\t")
>
> colnames(t)
>
> colnames(t) <- c("....) # new column names
>
> write.table(t, "a.txt", quote = F, sep = "\t",
row.names = F,
> col.names = T)
>
> My question is that is there a better to do this without reading in  
> and
> write out data entirely?

With an editor.

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT