R function: read.table

Reading text within the source file into a dataframe

df <- read.table(
  text='name val_1 val_2
foo 42 18.8
bar 123456789 -28.2
baz 0 99.9',
header = TRUE)

class(df)   # data.frame
mode(df)    # list
typeof(df)  # list

df
# 
#   name     val_1 val_2
# 1  foo        42  18.8
# 2  bar 123456789 -28.2
# 3  baz         0  99.9

class (df$name )  # factor
class (df$val_1)  # integer
class (df$val_2)  # numeric

mode  (df$name )  # numeric
mode  (df$val_1)  # numeric
mode  (df$val_2)  # numeric

typeof(df$name )  # integer
typeof(df$val_1)  # integer
typeof(df$val_2)  # double

Quoted strings

df <- read.table(
  text="name val_1
'item one' 1.1
'item two' 2.22
'item three' 3.333",
header = TRUE)

df
#
#         name val_1
# 1   item one 1.100
# 2   item two 2.220
# 3 item three 3.333

na.strings

df <- read.table(
  header     = TRUE ,          
  na.strings ='null',
  text       ='id val
1 foo
2 null
3 bar
4 baz'
)

df
# 
#   id  val
# 1  1  foo
# 2  2 <NA>
# 3  3  bar
# 4  4  baz

Reading data from the internet

#
#  https://stackoverflow.com/a/1296434/180275
#
url <- paste0(
       'https://random.org/integers/',
      '?num=100'                     , # Download 100 numbers
      '&base=10'                     , # with base 10
      '&min=0'                       , # in the range of 0 …
      '&max=100'                     , # 100
      '&col=2'                       , # Two columns
      '&format=plain'                , # text mode
      '&rnd=new'
    );

tab <- read.table(url);

See also