[R] Tools for data preparation?

[David Mitchell]

Hello list,

I'm regularly in the position where I have to do a lot of data
manipulation, in order to get the data I have into a format R is happy
with.  This manipulation would generally be in one of two forms:
- getting data from e.g. text log files into a tabular format
- extracting sensible sample data from a very large data set (i.e. too
large for R to handle)

In general, I use Perl or Python to do the task; I'm curious as to
what others use when they hit the same problem.

Regards

Dave Mitchell