bruceR (version 0.8.8)

import: Import data from a file (TXT, CSV, Excel, SPSS, Stata, ...) or clipboard.

Description

Import data from a file, with format automatically judged from file extension. This function is inspired by rio::import() and has several modifications. Its purpose is to avoid using lots of read_xxx() functions in your code and to provide one tidy function for data import.

It supports many file formats and uses corresponding R functions:

• Plain text (.txt, .csv, .csv2, .tsv, .psv), using data.table::fread()

• Excel (.xls, .xlsx), using readxl::read_excel()

• SPSS (.sav), using foreign::read.spss(); if failed, using haven::read_sav() instead

• Stata (.dta), using foreign::read.dta(); if failed, using haven::read_dta() instead

• R objects (.rda, .rdata, .Rdata), using base::load()

• R serialized objects (.rds), using base::readRDS()

• Clipboard (on Windows and Mac OS), using clipr::read_clip_tbl()

• Other formats, using rio::import()

Usage

import(
  file,
  sheet = NULL,
  range = NULL,
  encoding = NULL,
  header = "auto",
  setclass = as,
  as = "data.frame"
)

Value

A data object (default class is data.frame).

Arguments

file

File name (with extension). If unspecified, then data will be imported from clipboard.

sheet

[Only for Excel] Excel sheet name (or sheet number). Default is the first sheet. Ignored if the sheet is specified via range.

range

[Only for Excel] Excel cell range. Default are all cells in a sheet. You may specify it as range="A1:E100" or range="Sheet1!A1:E100".

encoding

File encoding. Default is NULL. Alternatives can be "UTF-8", "GBK", "CP936", etc.

If you find messy code for Chinese text in the imported data, it is usually effective to set encoding="UTF-8".

header

Does the first row contain column names (TRUE or FALSE)? Default is "auto".

setclass, as

Class of the imported data. Default is "data.frame". Ignored if the data file is R object (.rds, .rda, .rdata, .Rdata).

Alternatives can be:

• data.frame: "data.frame", "df", "DF"

• data.table: "data.table", "dt", "DT"

• tbl_df: "tibble", "tbl_df", "tbl"

See Also

export

Examples

if (FALSE) {

  # Import data from system clipboard
  data = import()  # read from clipboard (on Windows and Mac OS)

  # If you have an Excel file named "mydata.xlsx"
  export(airquality, file="mydata.xlsx")

  # Import data from a file
  data = import("mydata.xlsx")  # default: data.frame
  data = import("mydata.xlsx", as="data.table")
}