read.table is basic R function which reads a file in table format and creates a data frame from it, with cases corresponding to lines and variables to fields in the file.
read.table is basic R function which reads a file in table format and creates a data frame from it, with cases corresponding to lines and variables to fields in the file.
It is the most convenient way to read in a rectangular grid of data.
Because of the many possibilities, there are several other functions that call read.table but change a group of default arguments. Convenience functions read.csv and read.delim provide arguments to read.table appropriate for CSV and tab-delimited files exported from spreadsheets in English-speaking locales. The variations read.csv2 and read.delim2 are appropriate for use in those locales where the comma is used for the decimal point and (for read.csv2) for spreadsheets which use semicolons to separate fields.
See also The R Data Import/Export manual.
