data types

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s)

Read data into a vector or list from the console or file.

1 2	scan.text(file, blank.lines.skip = FALSE, strip.white = TRUE, quiet = TRUE, ...)

`file`	the name of a file to read data values from. If the specified file is `""`, then input is taken from the keyboard (or whatever `stdin()` reads if input is redirected or R is embedded). (In this case input can be terminated by a blank line or an EOF signal, Ctrl-D on Unix and Ctrl-Z on Windows.) Otherwise, the file name is interpreted relative to the current working directory (given by `getwd()`), unless it specifies an absolute path. Tilde-expansion is performed where supported. When running R from a script, `file = "stdin"` can be used to refer to the process's `stdin` file stream. This can be a compressed file (see `file`). Alternatively, `file` can be a `connection`, which will be opened if necessary, and if so closed at the end of the function call. Whatever mode the connection is opened in, any of LF, CRLF or CR will be accepted as the EOL marker for a line and so will match `sep = "\n"`. `file` can also be a complete URL. (For the supported URL schemes, see the ‘URLs’ section of the help for `url`.) To read a data file not in the current encoding (for example a Latin-1 file in a UTF-8 locale or conversely) use a `file` connection setting its `encoding` argument (or `scan`'s `fileEncoding` argument).
`blank.lines.skip`	logical: if `TRUE` blank lines in the input are ignored, except when counting `skip` and `nlines`.
`strip.white`	vector of logical value(s) corresponding to items in the `what` argument. It is used only when `sep` has been specified, and allows the stripping of leading and trailing ‘white space’ from `character` fields (`numeric` fields are always stripped). Note: white space inside quoted strings is not stripped. If `strip.white` is of length 1, it applies to all fields; otherwise, if `strip.white[i]` is `TRUE` and the `i`-th field is of mode character (because `what[i]` is) then the leading and trailing unquoted white space from field `i` is stripped.
`quiet`	logical: if `FALSE` (default), scan() will print a line, saying how many items have been read.
`...`	arguments passed to `scan`