read.transactions: Read Transaction Data

Description

Reads a transaction data file from disk and creates a transactions object.

Usage

read.transactions(file, format = c("basket", "single"), sep = "",
                  cols = NULL, rm.duplicates = FALSE, 
                  quote = ""'", skip = 0, 
                  encoding = "unknown")

Arguments

file

the file name.

format

a character string indicating the format of the data set. One of "basket" or "single", can be abbreviated.

sep

a character string specifying how fields are separated in the data file. The default ("") splits at whitespaces.

cols

For the single format, cols is a numeric or character vector of length two giving the numbers or names of the columns (fields) with the transaction and item ids, respectively. If character, the first line of

rm.duplicates

a logical value specifying if duplicate items should be removed from the transactions.

quote

a list of characters used as quotes when reading.

skip

number of lines to skip in the file before start reading data.

encoding

character string indicating the encoding which is passed to readLines or scan (see Encoding).

Value

Returns an object of class transactions.

Details

For basket format, each line in the transaction data file represents a transaction where the items (item labels) are separated by the characters specified by sep. For single format, each line corresponds to a single item, containing at least ids for the transaction and the item.

Examples

Run this code

## create a demo file using basket format for the example
data <- paste(
  "# this is some test data", 
  "item1, item2", 
  "item1", 
  "item2, item3", 
  sep="")
cat(data)
write(data, file = "demo_basket")

## read demo data (skip comment line)
tr <- read.transactions("demo_basket", format = "basket", sep=",", skip = 1)
inspect(tr)


## create a demo file using single format for the example
## column 1 contains the transaction ID and column 2 contains one item
data <- paste(
  "trans1 item1", 
  "trans2 item1",
  "trans2 item2", 
  sep ="")
cat(data)
write(data, file = "demo_single")

## read demo data
tr <- read.transactions("demo_single", format = "single", cols = c(1,2))
inspect(tr)


## tidy up
unlink("demo_basket")
unlink("demo_single")

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