file_schema_dsv: Preview the table structure contained in a DSV file.

In RSQLite.toolkit: Load Data in SQLite from Tabular Files

Preview the table structure contained in a DSV file.

Description

The file_schema_dsv() function returns a data frame with the schema of a DSV file reading only the first max_lines of a delimiter separated values (DSV) text file to infer column names and data types (it does not read the full dataset into memory). Then it converts them to the candidate data frame columns' names and data types.

Usage

file_schema_dsv(
  input_file,
  header = TRUE,
  sep = ",",
  dec = ".",
  grp = "",
  id_quote_method = "DB_NAMES",
  max_lines = 2000,
  null_columns = FALSE,
  force_num_cols = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

input_file	character, file name (including path) to be read.
header	logical, if TRUE the first line contains the fields' names. If FALSE, the column names will be formed sing a "V" followed by the column number (as specified in utils::read.table()).
sep	character, field delimiter (e.g., "," for CSV, "\t" for TSV) in the input file. Defaults to ",".
dec	character, decimal separator (e.g., "." or "," depending on locale) in the input file. Defaults to ".".
grp	character, character used for digit grouping. It defaults to "" (i.e. no grouping).
id_quote_method	character, used to specify how to build the SQLite columns' names using the fields' identifiers read from the input file. For details see the description of the quote_method parameter of the format_column_names() function. Defautls to DB_NAMES.
max_lines	integer, number of lines (excluding the header) to be read to infer columns' data types. Defaults to 2000.
null_columns	logical, if TRUE the col_type of columuns consisting only of NAs or zero-length strings will be marked as "NULL", otherwise they will be marked as character. Defaults to FALSE
force_num_cols	logical, if TRUE the returned schema will have all rows with n_cols columns (i.e. the guessed number of columns determined inspecting the first max_lines lines of the input file), even if there are rows in the input file with fewer or greater columns than n_cols. If FALSE and any of the tested lines has a number of columns not equal to n_cols, the function will return a list without the schema element. It defaults to TRUE.
...	Additional arguments for quoting and data interpretation as described in the base::scan() function. The main parameters useful for the file_schema_dsv function are: quote, character, the set of quoting characters. Defaults to "" (i.e., no quoting). comment.char, character, the comment character. Defaults to "" (i.e., no comments). skip, integer, the number of lines to skip before reading data. Defaults to 0. fileEncoding, character, the name of the encoding of the input file. Defaults to "". na.strings, character vector, the strings to be interpreted as NAs. Defaults to c("NA").

Value

a list with the following named elements:

• schema, a data frame with these columns:

  • col_names: columns' names, after applying the selected quote method;

  • col_names_unquoted: columns' names, unquoted; if id_quote_method is set to DB_NAMES they will be the same as col_names; for other quote methods they will be the unquoted versions of col_names,that is generally the same as src_names unless src_names contain the quoting characters;

  • col_types: columns' R data types;

  • sql_types: columns' SQLite data types;

  • src_names: columns' names as they appear in the input file.

  • src_types: defaults to text for all columns.

  • src_is_quoted: logical vector indicating if each column has at least one value enclosed in quotes.

  • all_na: logical vector indicating if each column consists only of NAs.

• col_counts, a data frame with these columns:

  • num_col: number of columns,

  • Freq: number of rows (within max_lines) that have the number of colums shown in num_col.

• n_cols, integer, the number of columns selected for the file.

• num_col, a vector of integers of length max_lines with the number of detected columns in each row tested.

• col_fill, logical, it is set to TRUE if there are lines with less columns than n_cols.

• col_flush, logical, it is set to TRUE if there are lines with more columns than n_cols.

Examples

# Inspect CSV file schema without loading full dataset
data_path <- system.file("extdata", package = "RSQLite.toolkit")

# Get schema information for abalone CSV
schema_info <- file_schema_dsv(
  input_file = file.path(data_path, "abalone.csv"),
  header = TRUE,
  sep = ",",
  dec = ".",
  max_lines = 50
)

# Display schema information
print(schema_info$schema[, c("col_names", "col_types", "sql_types")])

# Check column consistency
print(schema_info$col_counts)
print(paste("Guessed columns:", schema_info$n_cols))

# Example with different parameters
schema_custom <- file_schema_dsv(
  input_file = file.path(data_path, "abalone.csv"),
  header = TRUE,
  sep = ",",
  dec = ".",
  max_lines = 50,
  id_quote_method = "SQL_SERVER"
)

print(schema_custom$schema[, c("col_names", "col_types", "src_names")])

RSQLite.toolkit documentation built on Sept. 2, 2026, 9:06 a.m.