R Write Multiple Lines to Text File

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How do I write lines of strings to a text file in R with an extension .txt file? R provides several ways to write multiple lines in sequence to a text file by using writeLines(), sink(), cat(), and write_lines() from tidyverse package.

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1. Quick Examples

The following are quick examples of how to write multiple lines to a text file in R.


# Quick Examples

# Example 1 - using writeLines()
file_conn = file("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")
writeLines(c("I Love R Programming","I live in USA"), file_conn)
close(fileConn)
file.show("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

# Example 2 - Using with out file connection
writeLines(c("I Love R Programming","I live in USA"), 
              "/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

# Example 3 - Using string
text ='I Love R Programming \nI live in USA'
writeLines(text, "/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

# Example 4 - using sink()
sink("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")
cat("I Love R Programming")
cat("\n")
cat("I live in USA")
sink()

# Example 5 - Using cat()
cat("I Love R Programming",file="outfile.txt",sep="\n")
cat("I live in USA",file="/Users/admin/textFile.txt",append=TRUE)

# Example 6 - Using tidyverse
library(tidyverse)
c('I Love R Programming', 'I live in USA') %>% 
    write_lines( "/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

2. Using writeLines()

R base function writeLines() is used to write the sequence of multiple lines to the text file. This method accepts Vector with the lines you would like to write or string. To create a vector use c() function. The option of writeLines() is roughly ten times faster then the sink() and cat() methods explained below.

2.1 Syntax of writeLines()

Following is the syntax of the writeLines() function.


# Syntax of writeLines()
writeLines(text, con = stdout(), sep = "\n", useBytes = FALSE)
textA character vector or character string
conA File connection object or a file name in a string.
sepcharacter string. A string is to be written to the connection after each line of text.
useBytesDefault is set to False.

2.2 Write Lines to Text File Example

Here, I have used a lines I wanted to write to a text file in a Vector. If the file you are trying to write not exits, it automatically creates it and write the contents.


# Example 1 - using writeLines()
file_conn = file("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")
writeLines(c("I Love R Programming","I live in USA"), file_conn)
close(fileConn)

This creates a textFile.txt at the specified location and the contents of the file would be.

R write lines text

Now, let’s simplify this without creating a file connection. if the con is a character string, it automatically gets a file connection which is opened for the duration of the function call and closes it once the write completes.


# Example 2
writeLines(c("I Love R Programming","I live in USA"), 
              "/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

If you have a string with multiple lines separated by new line character, you can use this to write.

# Example 3 text =’I Love R Programming \n I live in USA’ writeLines(text, “/Users/admin/textFile.txt”)

3. Using sink() to Write Lines

You can also use sink() to write lines to a .txt file. 


# Example 4
sink("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")
cat("I Love R Programming")
cat("\n")
cat("I live in USA")
sink()

4. Using cat() to Write Lines to Text File

Another approach would be using cat(), this is not a recommended option as it opens and closes a file for every cat() function you call. This approach might be inefficient. Use append=TRUE to append lines to the existing text file.


# Example 5 - Using cat
cat("I Love R Programming",file="/Users/admin/textFile.txt",sep="\n")
cat("I live in USA",file="/Users/admin/textFile.txt",append=TRUE)

5. Using tidyverse package

Package tidyverse provides write_lines() function that can be used to write lines to a text file. In order to use tidyverse first you need to install it using install.packages('tidyverse') and load it using library(tidyverse)


# Example 6 - Using tidyverse
library(tidyverse)
c('I Love R Programming', 'I live in USA') %>% 
    write_lines("/Users/admin/textFile.txt")

6. Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to write multiple string lines to a text file in R by using writeLines(), sink(), cat(), and method from tidyverse package.

References