Hi, Try ?paste() dat1 <- read.table(text="apkkaakafmfffakkannpaaapkacfaapfd kpaaakaaaafkpkfbfakaaofakapkpppfcgaanfpfakaappffak fkpkfbfakaaofakapkpppfcgaanfpfa aakaaaafkpkfbfakaaofakapkpppfc",sep="",header=FALSE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) res <-? paste(dat1[,1],collapse="") A.K. So I have a 19x1 column vector. Each row of the column vector contains a string. For example, the (1,1) entry contains "apkkaakafmfffakkannpaaapkacfaapfd" and the (2,1) entry contains "kpaaakaaaafkpkfbfakaaofakapkpppfcgaanfpfakaappffak" and so on. How can I concatenate the rows so that I just have a 1 by 1 cell containing the strings from the first, second, third, ..., nineteenth row concatenated without any spaces between them? E.g., concatenating the first two rows should yield: "apkkaakafmfffakkannpaaapkacfaapfdkpaaakaaaafkpkfbfakaaofakapkpppfcgaanfpfakaappffak" Thanks.