Importing and Exporting Data

In R, we can import data formats like ASCII, Excel, CSV and many more
Files with extensions
- .txt (files in text fomrat),
- .csv (files in comma seperated values) and
- .xlxs (files in excel formate)
Lets learn one by one
Note: For more about file extensions (.txt, .csv, .xlxs) please GOOGLE
Two most commonly used methods for importing data

read.csv("path/filename.csv")
read.table("path/filename.txt")
# YOU can assign name to the imported data sets
data <- read.csv("path/filename.csv")
data1 <- read.table("path/filename.txt")
# Here data and data1 is the assigned names to the imported data sets

importing data using `read.table` function

Arguments for the read.table
- header = TRUE read first line as column names
- dec = "," comma as decimal mark
- sep = "_" underscore as column separator (“ for tabstop)
- fill = T fill incomplete rows with NAs at the end
- skip = 12 ignore the first 12 lines (eg with meta data)

importing data using `read.table` function

# First let's get help
?help(read.table)
?read.table
# Above these functions will help you to get the details about importing files using read.table

Let’s import/read the data file named example.txt

# importing text file
mydata1 <- read.table("example.txt", header=TRUE, sep="\t")

Importing data using `read.csv`

read.csv is used import data file with .csv extension aka file in which data is stored with comma sepearted value
Let’s take an example

# First let's get help
?help(read.csv)
?read.csv
# Above these functions will help you to get the details about importing the .csv files

Let’s import/read the data file named example.csv

# First let's get help
mydata <- read.csv("example.csv")

Importing data- Move away from PATH DEPENDENCY

In the above two methods, we have to give path of the data file stored/kept
Instead, we can use file.choose() function

# Importing csv file
mydata2 <- read.csv(file.choose(),header = T)

# importing text file
mydat3 <- read.table(file.choose(),header = T,sep=",")

# importing tab delimited file
mydata4 <- read.table(file.choose(),header = T,sep = "\t")

# another way to import tab delimited file
mydata5 <- read.delim(file.choose(),header = T,sep = "\t")

Writing/Exporting Data to a file

Setup a directory if not done using command setwd()
or know your directory using command getwd()
If Rproject is being used no need of setting working directory
In R, we can write data frames easily to a file, using the write.table() command.

# another way to import tab delimited file
write.table(name, file="name.txt", quote=F)

First argument refers to the data frame to be written to the output file
the second is the name of the output file.
By default R will surround each entry in the output file by quotes, so we use quote=F.
Use the below command, notice the difference

# another way to import tab delimited file
write.table(mydata, file="name1.txt", quote=F,row.names=F )

Excel?

Importing data from Excel file

require(readxl) # package required to import excel file

mydata6 <- read_excel("example.xlsx",sheet = 1)

Exporting data to Excel file

require(writexl)# package required to export data to an excel file

write_xlsx(mydata, "name1.xlsx")

One more method

New method

Video Player is loading.

Current Time 0:00

Duration 0:40

Loaded: 29.52%

Stream Type LIVE

Remaining Time 0:40

THANKS