export | R Documentation |
Write data.frame to a file
export(x, file, format, ...)
x |
A data frame, matrix or a single-item list of data frame to be written into a file. Exceptions to this rule are that |
file |
A character string naming a file. Must specify |
format |
An optional character string containing the file format, which can be used to override the format inferred from |
... |
Additional arguments for the underlying export functions. This can be used to specify non-standard arguments. See examples. |
This function exports a data frame or matrix into a file with file format based on the file extension (or the manually specified format, if format
is specified).
The output file can be to a compressed directory, simply by adding an appropriate additional extensiont to the file
argument, such as: “mtcars.csv.tar”, “mtcars.csv.zip”, or “mtcars.csv.gz”.
export
supports many file formats. See the documentation for the underlying export functions for optional arguments that can be passed via ...
Comma-separated data (.csv), using data.table::fwrite()
Pipe-separated data (.psv), using data.table::fwrite()
Tab-separated data (.tsv), using data.table::fwrite()
SAS (.sas7bdat), using haven::write_sas()
.
SAS XPORT (.xpt), using haven::write_xpt()
.
SPSS (.sav), using haven::write_sav()
SPSS compressed (.zsav), using haven::write_sav()
Stata (.dta), using haven::write_dta()
. Note that variable/column names containing dots (.) are not allowed and will produce an error.
Excel (.xlsx), using writexl::write_xlsx()
. x
can also be a list of data frames; the list entry names are used as sheet names.
R syntax object (.R), using base::dput()
(by default) or base::dump()
(if format = 'dump'
)
Saved R objects (.RData,.rda), using base::save()
. In this case, x
can be a data frame, a named list of objects, an R environment, or a character vector containing the names of objects if a corresponding envir
argument is specified.
Serialized R objects (.rds), using base::saveRDS()
. In this case, x
can be any serializable R object.
Serialized R objects (.qs), using qs::qsave()
, which is
significantly faster than .rds. This can be any R
object (not just a data frame).
"XBASE" database files (.dbf), using foreign::write.dbf()
Weka Attribute-Relation File Format (.arff), using foreign::write.arff()
Fixed-width format data (.fwf), using utils::write.table()
with row.names = FALSE
, quote = FALSE
, and col.names = FALSE
CSVY (CSV with a YAML metadata header) using data.table::fwrite()
.
Apache Arrow Parquet (.parquet), using nanoparquet::write_parquet()
Feather R/Python interchange format (.feather), using arrow::write_feather()
Fast storage (.fst), using fst::write.fst()
JSON (.json), using jsonlite::toJSON()
. In this case, x
can be a variety of R objects, based on class mapping conventions in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2805.
Matlab (.mat), using rmatio::write.mat()
OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods, .fods), using readODS::write_ods()
or readODS::write_fods()
.
HTML (.html), using a custom method based on xml2::xml_add_child()
to create a simple HTML table and xml2::write_xml()
to write to disk.
XML (.xml), using a custom method based on xml2::xml_add_child()
to create a simple XML tree and xml2::write_xml()
to write to disk.
YAML (.yml), using yaml::write_yaml()
, default to write the content with UTF-8. Might not work on some older systems, e.g. default Windows locale for R <= 4.2.
Clipboard export (on Windows and Mac OS), using utils::write.table()
with row.names = FALSE
When exporting a data set that contains label attributes (e.g., if imported from an SPSS or Stata file) to a plain text file, characterize()
can be a useful pre-processing step that records value labels into the resulting file (e.g., export(characterize(x), "file.csv")
) rather than the numeric values.
Use export_list()
to export a list of dataframes to separate files.
The name of the output file as a character string (invisibly).
characterize()
, import()
, convert()
, export_list()
## For demo, a temp. file path is created with the file extension .csv
csv_file <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
## .xlsx
xlsx_file <- tempfile(fileext = ".xlsx")
## create CSV to import
export(iris, csv_file)
## You can certainly export your data with the file name, which is not a variable:
## import(mtcars, "car_data.csv")
## pass arguments to the underlying function
## data.table::fwrite is the underlying function and `col.names` is an argument
export(iris, csv_file, col.names = FALSE)
## export a list of data frames as worksheets
export(list(a = mtcars, b = iris), xlsx_file)
# NOT RECOMMENDED
## specify `format` to override default format
export(iris, xlsx_file, format = "csv") ## That's confusing
## You can also specify only the format; in the following case
## "mtcars.dta" is written [also confusing]
## export(mtcars, format = "stata")
Add the following code to your website.
For more information on customizing the embed code, read Embedding Snippets.