Hi Atem,
It is not clear what you wanted to do. If you want to transfer the subset of files from the main folder to a new location, then you may try: (make sure you create a copy of the original .txt folder before doing this) I created three sub folders and two files (BTemperature_Stations.txt and Tempearture inventory.csv) in my working directory. list.files() #[1] "BTemperature_Stations.txt" "Files1" ## Files1 folder contains all the .txt files; #SubsetFiles: created to subset the files that match the condition #[3] "FilesCopy" "SubsetFiles1" #FilesCopy. A copy of the Files1 folder #[5] "Tempearture inventory.csv" list.files(pattern="\\.") #[1] "BTemperature_Stations.txt" "Tempearture inventory.csv" fl1 <- list.files(pattern="\\.") dat1 <- read.table(fl1[1],header=TRUE,sep="",stringsAsFactors=FALSE,fill=TRUE,check.names=FALSE) dat2 <- read.csv(fl1[2],header=TRUE,sep=",",stringsAsFactors=FALSE,check.names=FALSE) vec1 <- dat1[,3][dat1[,3]%in% dat2[,3]] vec2 <- list.files(path="/home/arunksa111/Zl/Files1",recursive=TRUE) sum(gsub(".txt","",vec2) %in% vec1) #[1] 98 vec3 <- vec2[gsub(".txt","",vec2) %in% vec1] lapply(vec3, function(x) file.rename(paste("/home/arunksa111/Zl/Files1",x,sep="/"), paste("/home/arunksa111/Zl/SubsetFiles1",x,sep="/"))) #change the path accordingly. length(list.files(path="/home/arunksa111/Zl/SubsetFiles1")) #[1] 98 fileDim <- sapply(vec3,function(x) {x1 <-read.delim(paste("/home/arunksa111/Zl/SubsetFiles1",x,sep="/"),header=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE,sep=",",check.names=FALSE); dim(x1)}) fileDim[,1:3] # dn3011120.txt dn3011240.txt dn3011887.txt #[1,] 1151 791 1054 #[2,] 7 7 7 A.K. On Friday, November 8, 2013 1:41 PM, Zilefac Elvis <zilefacel...@yahoo.com> wrote: Hi AK, I want to select some files from a list of files. All are text files. The index for selection is found in column 3 of both files. Attached are my data files. Btemperature_Stations is my main file. Temperature inventory is my 'wanted' file and is a subset of Btemperature_Stations. Using column 3 in both files, select the files in Temperature inventory from Btemperature_Stations. The .zip file contains the .txt files which you will extract to a folder and do the selection in R. Thanks, Atem. ______________________________________________ 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.