Read Lines from a File in R Programming – readLines() Function

readLines() function in R Language reads text lines from an input file. The readLines() function is perfect for text files since it reads the text line by line and creates character objects for each of the lines.

Syntax: readLines(path)

Parameter:
path: path of the file

Example 1:

# R program to illustrate
# readLines() function

# Store currently used directory
path <- getwd()

# Write example text to currently used directory
write.table(x = "the first line\nthe second line\nthe third line",
            file = paste(path, "/my_txt.txt", sep = ""),
            row.names = FALSE, col.names = FALSE, quote = FALSE)

# Apply readLines function to txt file
my_txt <- readLines(paste(path, "/my_txt.txt", sep = ""))
my_txt

Output:

[1] "the first line"  "the second line" "the third line"

Example 2:

# R program to illustrate
# readLines() function

# Store currently used directory
path <- getwd()

# Write example text to currently used directory
write.table(x = "the first line\nthe second line\nthe third line",
            file = paste(path, "/my_txt.txt", sep = ""),
            row.names = FALSE, col.names = FALSE, quote = FALSE)

# Apply readLines function to first two lines
my_txt_ex2 <- readLines(paste(path, "/my_txt.txt", sep = ""),
                        n = 2)
my_txt_ex2

Output:

[1] "the first line"  "the second line"