file.ncol: Find the number of columns (lines) in a file.
In reader: Suite of Functions to Flexibly Read Data from Files

Description Usage Arguments Value Author(s) See Also Examples

Returns the number of columns in a datafile. File equivalent of ncol()

1 2	file.ncol(fn, reader = FALSE, del = NULL, comment = "#", skip = 0, force = FALSE, excl.rn = FALSE)

`fn`	name of the file(s) to get the length of
`reader`	try to read the entire file to get a result, else looks at the top few lines (ignoring comments)
`del`	specify a delimiter (else this will be auto-detected)
`comment`	a comment symbol to ignore lines in files
`skip`	number of lines to skip at top of file before processing
`force`	try to read the file regardless of whether it looks like an invalid file type. Only use when you know the files are valid
`excl.rn`	exclude rownames from column count (essentially subtract 1)

returns number of columns in file(s). If no delimiter, then =1

Nicholas Cooper nick.cooper@cimr.cam.ac.uk

file.nrow

orig.dir <- getwd(); setwd(tempdir()); # move to temporary dir
write.table(matrix(rnorm(100),nrow=10),"temp.txt",col.names=FALSE,row.names=FALSE)
file.ncol("temp.txt",excl.rn=TRUE)
unlink("temp.txt")
# find ncol for all files in current directory:
# [NB: use with caution, will be slow if dir contains large files]
# not run # lf <- list.files(); if(length(lf)==0) { print("no files in dir") }
# lf <- lf[classify.ext(lf)=="TXT"]
# not run (only works if length(lf)>0) # file.ncol(lf) 
setwd(orig.dir) # reset working directory to original