How to read or import data from a text file as a character string in R? R provides several ways to do so but one thing you need to remember is that loading large files of data into a string will result in memory issues hence, keep this in mind.
1. Quick Examples
Following are quick examples of different ways to read or import a text file into a string variable.
# Quick Examples
# Read text file into string
file_str <- paste(readLines("/users/admin/file.txt"), collapse="\n")
# Using readr package
library(readr)
file_str <- read_file("/users/admin/file.txt")
# Read Text File as String
text_file <- '/users/admin/file.txt'
file_str = readChar(text_file, file.info(text_file)$size)
2. Read Text File into String
To read or load the content of the text file into a string variable use the below approach. Use collapse=’\n’ to collapse all lines into a single line. This approach works well for compressed files as well.
# Read text file into string
file_str <- paste(readLines("/users/admin/file.txt"), collapse="\n")
3. Using readr Package
If you are working with larger files, you should use the read_file()
function readr
package. readr
is a third-party library hence, in order to use readr
library, you need to first install it by using install.packages('readr')
. Once installation completes, load the readr
library in order to use this read_file()
method. To load a library in R use library("readr")
.
# Using readr package
library(readr)
file_str <- read_file("/users/admin/file.txt")
4. Using readChar() Function
This allocates the memory with the size of the file and then loads it into a variable. This is the least preferred option.
# Read Text File as String
text_file <- '/users/admin/file.txt'
file_str = readChar(text_file, file.info(text_file)$size)
5. Conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to read or load the content of a text file into a string variable in R. For faster performance, use read_file() from readr package.
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