How to read and print first head of a file in R?

Question

I want to print a head of a file in R. I know how to use read.table and other input methods supported by R. I just want to know R alternatives to unix command cat or head that reads in a file and print some of them.

Thank you,

SangChul

`head()`, `tail()`, and look at `?[` for more sophisticated indexing / extracting options. — Chase, Mar 02 '12 at 14:41
You apparently don't know yet about `readLines()` and the `n` argument of this function... — Joris Meys, Mar 02 '12 at 14:42

Josh O'Brien · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-02T21:12:51.083

6

read.table() takes an nrows argument for just this purpose:

read.table(header=TRUE, text="
    a b
    1 2
    3 4
    ", nrows=1)
#   a b
# 1 1 2

If you are instead reading in (possibly less structured) files with readLines(), you can use its n argument instead:

readLines(textConnection("a b
1 2 3 4 some other things
last"), n=1)
# [1] "a b"

edited Mar 02 '12 at 21:12

answered Mar 02 '12 at 14:42

Josh O'Brien

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How to read and print first head of a file in R?

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