R/read.so.R

In mrdwab/AMsnippets: Useful function "snippets"

#'Read displayed text at Stack Overflow
#'
#'For many questions at Stack Overflow, the question asker does not properly
#'share their question (for example, using \code{\link{dput}} or by sharing
#'some commands to make up the data). Most of the time, you can just copy and
#'paste the text into R using \code{read.table(text = "clipboard", header =
#'TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)}.  This function is basically a convenience
#'function for the above.
#'
#'The output of \code{\link{read.so}} is automatically assigned to an object in
#'your workspace called "\code{mydf}" unless specified using the \code{out} argument.
#'
#'@param sep Most of the time, the code shared is space separated (which is the
#'default for this function). If the separator is any other character, it can
#'be specified here.
#'@param header Are headers included?
#'@param out Desired output object name. Defaults to \code{mydf}.
#'@author Ananda Mahto
#'@seealso \code{\link{dput}}, \code{\link{read.table}}
#'@examples
#'
#'\dontrun{
#'## Copy the following text (select and ctrl-c)
#'
#'# A B
#'# 1 2
#'# 3 4
#'# 5 6
#'
#'## Now, just type:
#'
#'read.so()
#'}
#'
read.so <- function(sep = "", header = TRUE, out = "mydf") {
  OS <- ifelse(Sys.info()["sysname"] == "Darwin", "Mac", "others")
  temp <- switch(
    OS,
    Mac = {
      suppressWarnings(
        read.table(text = gsub("^#", "", pipe("pbpaste")), header = header, 
                   stringsAsFactors = FALSE, sep = sep))
    },
    others = {
      suppressWarnings(
        read.table(text = gsub("^#", "", readLines("clipboard")),
                   header = header, stringsAsFactors = FALSE, sep = sep))
    }) 
  assign(out, temp, envir = .GlobalEnv)
  message("data.frame ", dQuote(out), " created in your workspace")
  temp
}