Write Data to a File (original) (raw)
| write {base} | R Documentation |
|---|
Description
Write data x to a file or other [connection](../../base/help/connection.html).
As it simply calls [cat](../../base/help/cat.html)(), less formatting happens than with [print](../../base/help/print.html)()ing. If x is a matrix you need to transpose it (and typically setncolumns) to get the columns in file the same as those in the internal representation.
Whereas atomic vectors ([numeric](../../base/help/numeric.html), [character](../../base/help/character.html), etc, including matrices) are written plainly, i.e., without any names, less simple vector-like objects such as "[factor](../../base/help/factor.html)","[Date](../../base/help/Date.html)", or "[POSIXt](../../base/help/POSIXt.html)" may be[format](../../base/help/format.html)ted to character before writing.
Usage
write(x, file = "data",
ncolumns = if(is.character(x)) 1 else 5,
append = FALSE, sep = " ")
Arguments
| x | the data to be written out. |
|---|---|
| file | a connection, or a character string naming the file to write to. If "", print to the standard output connection, i.e., "" is equivalent to stdout()here. When .Platform$OS.type != "windows", and it is "|cmd", the output is piped to the command given by ‘cmd’. |
| ncolumns | the number of columns to write the data in. |
| append | if TRUE the data x are appended to the connection. |
| sep | a string used to separate columns. Using sep = "\t"gives tab delimited output; default is " ". |
References
Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988)The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.
See Also
write is a wrapper for [cat](../../base/help/cat.html), which gives further details on the format used.
[write.table](../../utils/html/write.table.html) for matrix and data frame objects,[writeLines](../../base/help/writeLines.html) for lines of text, and [scan](../../base/help/scan.html) for reading data.
[saveRDS](../../base/help/saveRDS.html) and [save](../../base/help/save.html) are often preferable (for writing any R objects).
Examples
# Demonstrate default ncolumns, writing to the console
write(month.abb, "") # 1 element per line for "character"
write(stack.loss, "") # 5 elements per line for "numeric"
# Build a file with sequential calls
fil <- tempfile("data")
write("# Model settings", fil)
write(month.abb, fil, ncolumns = 6, append = TRUE)
write("\n# Initial parameter values", fil, append = TRUE)
write(sqrt(stack.loss), fil, append = TRUE)
if(interactive()) file.show(fil)
unlink(fil) # tidy up
[Package _base_ version 4.6.0 Index]