export: Export data to a file (TXT, CSV, Excel, SPSS, Stata, ...) or...

In bruceR: Broadly Useful Convenient and Efficient R Functions

Export data to a file (TXT, CSV, Excel, SPSS, Stata, ...) or clipboard.

Description

Export data to a file, with format automatically judged from file extension. This function is inspired by rio::export() and has several modifications. Its purpose is to avoid using lots of write_xxx() functions in your code and to provide one tidy function for data export.

It supports many file formats and uses corresponding R functions:

• Plain text (.txt, .csv, .csv2, .tsv, .psv), using data.table::fwrite(); if the encoding argument is specified, using utils::write.table() instead

• Excel (.xls, .xlsx), using openxlsx::write.xlsx()

• SPSS (.sav), using haven::write_sav()

• Stata (.dta), using haven::write_dta()

• R objects (.rda, .rdata, .RData), using save()

• R serialized objects (.rds), using saveRDS()

• Clipboard (on Windows and Mac OS), using clipr::write_clip()

• Other formats, using rio::export()

Usage

export(
  x,
  file,
  encoding = NULL,
  header = "auto",
  sheet = NULL,
  overwrite = TRUE,
  verbose = FALSE
)

Arguments

x	Any R object, usually a data frame (data.frame, data.table, tbl_df). Multiple R objects should be included in a named list (see examples). To save R objects, specify file with extensions .rda, .rdata, or .RData.
file	File name (with extension). If unspecified, data will be exported to clipboard.
encoding	File encoding. Defaults to NULL. Options: "UTF-8", "GBK", "CP936", etc. If you find messy code for Chinese text in the exported data (often in CSV when opened with Excel), it is usually useful to set encoding="GBK" or encoding="CP936".
header	Does the first row contain column names (TRUE or FALSE)? Defaults to "auto".
sheet	[Only for Excel] Excel sheet name(s). Defaults to "Sheet1", "Sheet2", ... You may specify multiple sheet names in a character vector c() with the same length as x (see examples).
overwrite	Overwrite the existing file (if any)? Defaults to TRUE.
verbose	Print output information? Defaults to FALSE.

Value

No return value.

See Also

import()

print_table()

Examples

## Not run: 

  export(airquality)  # paste to clipboard
  export(airquality, file="mydata.csv")
  export(airquality, file="mydata.sav")

  export(list(airquality, npk), file="mydata.xlsx")  # Sheet1, Sheet2
  export(list(air=airquality, npk=npk), file="mydata.xlsx")  # a named list
  export(list(airquality, npk), sheet=c("air", "npk"), file="mydata.xlsx")

  export(list(a=1, b=npk, c="character"), file="abc.Rdata")  # .rda, .rdata
  d = import("abc.Rdata")  # load only the first object and rename it to `d`
  load("abc.Rdata")  # load all objects with original names to environment

  export(lm(yield ~ N*P*K, data=npk), file="lm_npk.Rdata")
  model = import("lm_npk.Rdata")
  load("lm_npk.Rdata")  # because x is unnamed, the object has a name "List1"

  export(list(m1=lm(yield ~ N*P*K, data=npk)), file="lm_npk.Rdata")
  model = import("lm_npk.Rdata")
  load("lm_npk.Rdata")  # because x is named, the object has a name "m1"

## End(Not run)

bruceR documentation built on Aug. 21, 2025, 5:38 p.m.