[R] Using read.table to read file created with read.table and qmethod = "escape"

Hadley Wickham hadley at rice.edu
Thu Apr 8 16:01:45 CEST 2010


>> Can write.table and read.table really be so asymmetric?
>
> write() is a wrapper for cat() and read() is a wrapper for scan() so the
> question should really be can cat() and scan() be so asymmetric. Looking at
> their help pages, I would say that at least some degree of asymmetry is
> plausible. Perhaps using save() with load() , or dput() with dget(), which
> are pairings that promise to have symmetry?

Why should I have to care about the internal implementation details?
This is one of the things that really frustrates me (and other new
users of R) - read.table/write.table and read.csv/write.csv are named
symmetrically, but do not work symmetrically.

Hadley


-- 
Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
Department of Statistics / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/



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