Let's do it in two parts: first create all the separate files (which if this what you are after, we can stop here). You can change the value on readLines to read in as many lines as you want; I set it to 2 just for testing.
x <- textConnection("APE!KKU!684! APE!VAL!! APE!UASU!! APE!PLA!1! APE!E!10! APE!TPVA!17122009! APE!STAP!1! GG!KK!KK! APE!KKU!684! APE!VAL!! APE!UASU!! APE!PLA!1! APE!E!10! APE!TPVA!17122009! APE!STAP!1! GG!KK!KK! APE!KKU!684! APE!VAL!! APE!UASU!! APE!PLA!1! APE!E!10! APE!TPVA!17122009! APE!STAP!1! GG!KK!KK!") fileNo <- 1 # used for file name buffer <- NULL repeat{ input <- readLines(x, n = 100) if (length(input) == 0) break # done buffer <- c(buffer, input) # find separator repeat{ indx <- which(grepl("^GG!KK!KK!", buffer))[1] if (is.na(indx)) break # not found yet; read more writeLines(buffer[1:(indx - 1L)] , sprintf("newFile%04d", fileNo) ) buffer <- buffer[-c(1:indx)] # remove data fileNo <- fileNo + 1 } } On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 8:12 AM, johannes rara <johannesr...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have a data set like this in one .txt file (cols separated by !): > > APE!KKU!684! > APE!VAL!! > APE!UASU!! > APE!PLA!1! > APE!E!10! > APE!TPVA!17122009! > APE!STAP!1! > GG!KK!KK! > APE!KKU!684! > APE!VAL!! > APE!UASU!! > APE!PLA!1! > APE!E!10! > APE!TPVA!17122009! > APE!STAP!1! > GG!KK!KK! > APE!KKU!684! > APE!VAL!! > APE!UASU!! > APE!PLA!1! > APE!E!10! > APE!TPVA!17122009! > APE!STAP!1! > GG!KK!KK! > > it contains over 14 000 000 records. Now because I'm out of memory > when trying to handle this data in R, I'm trying to read it > sequentially and write it out in several .csv files (or .RData files) > and then read these into R one-by-one. One record in this data is > between lines GG!KK!KK! and GG!KK!KK!. I tried to implement Jim > Holtman's approach > (http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e6/help/09/03/8416.html) but the > problem is how to avoid cutting one record from the middle? I mean > that if I put nrows = 1000000, I don't know if one record (between > marks GG!KK!KK! and GG!KK!KK! is ending up in two files). How to avoid > that? My code so far: > > zz <- file("myfile.txt", "r") > fileNo <- 1 > repeat{ > > gotError <- 1 # set to 2 if there is an error # catch the > error if not more data > tryCatch(input <- read.csv(zz, as.is=T, nrows=1000000, sep='!', > row.names=NULL, na.strings="", header=FALSE), > error=function(x) gotError <<- 2) > > if (gotError == 2) break > # save the intermediate data > save(input, file=sprintf("file%03d.RData", fileNo)) > fileNo <- fileNo + 1 > } > close(zz) > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Jim Holtman Data Munger Guru What is the problem that you are trying to solve? ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.