scan() function in R Language is used to scan and read data. It is usually used to read data into vector or list or from file in R Language.
Syntax:
scan(“data.txt”, what = “character”)Parameter:
data.txt: Text file to be scannedReturns: Scanned output
Example 1: Scanning of Text
# R Program to scan a file # Create example data.frame data <- data.frame(x1 = c(1, 2, 2, 3),
x2 = c(4, 5, 6, 7),
x3 = c(8, 9, 10, 11))
data # Write data as txt file to directory write.table(data,
file = "data.txt",
row.names = FALSE)
# Get currently used directory getwd()
# Apply scan function to txt file data <- scan("data.txt", what = "character")
data |
Output :
x1 x2 x3 1 1 4 8 2 2 5 9 3 2 6 10 4 3 7 11 [1] "/home/cg/root/8121844" [1] "x1" "x2" "x3" "1" "4" "8" "2" "5" "9" "2" "6" "10" "3" "7" "11" Read 15 items
Example 2: Scan data as text
# R Program to scan a file # Create example data.frame data <- data.frame(x1 = c(1, 2, 2, 3),
x2 = c(4, 5, 6, 7),
x3 = c(8, 9, 10, 11))
data # Write data as txt file to directory write.table(data,
file = "data.txt",
row.names = FALSE)
# Read txt file into list data <- scan("data.txt", what = list("", "", ""))
data |
Output:
x1 x2 x3 1 1 4 8 2 2 5 9 3 2 6 10 4 3 7 11 [[1]] [1] "x1" "1" "2" "2" "3" [[2]] [1] "x2" "4" "5" "6" "7" [[3]] [1] "x3" "8" "9" "10" "11" Read 5 records
Example 3: Skip lines with scan function
# R Program to scan a file # Create example data.frame data <- data.frame(x1 = c(1, 2, 2, 3),
x2 = c(4, 5, 6, 7),
x3 = c(8, 9, 10, 11))
data # Write data as txt file to directory write.table(data,
file = "data.txt",
row.names = FALSE)
# Skip first line of txt file data <- scan("data.txt", skip = 1)
data |
Output:
x1 x2 x3 1 1 4 8 2 2 5 9 3 2 6 10 4 3 7 11 [1] 1 4 8 2 5 9 2 6 10 3 7 11 Read 12 items
Example 4: Scan Excel CSV File
# R Program to scan a file # Create example data.frame data <- data.frame(x1 = c(1, 2, 2, 3),
x2 = c(4, 5, 6, 7),
x3 = c(8, 9, 10, 11))
data # Write data as csv file to directory write.table(data,
file = "data.csv",
row.names = FALSE)
# Apply scan function to csv file data <- scan("data.csv", what = "character")
data |
Output:
x1 x2 x3 x1 x2 x3 1 1 4 8 2 2 5 9 3 2 6 10 4 3 7 11 Read 15 items [1] "x1" "x2" "x3" "1" "4" "8" "2" "5" "9" "2" "6" "10" "3" "7" "11"
Example 5: Read input from the keyboard.
# take input from keyboard z <- scan()
1 2 3 4 # print output on the screen print(z)
|
Output:
Read 4 items [1] 1 2 3 4
Here, in the above code, the scan() function will take input from the user and print value using the print() function.