I have been trying to read a random sample of lines from a file into a data frame using readLines(). The help indicates that readLines() will start from the current line if the connection is open, but presented with a closed connection it will open it, start from the beginning, and close it when finished.
In the code that follows I tried to open the file before reading but apparently without success, because the result was repeated copies of the first line: flines <- 107165 slines <- 100 selected <- sort(sample(flines,slines)) strvec <- rep(“”,slines) file(“c:/data/perry/data.csv”,open="r") isel <- 0 for (iline in 1:slines) { isel <- isel + 1 cline <- readLines(“c:/data/perry/data.csv”,n=1) if (iline == selected[isel]) strvec[isel] <- cline else isel <- isel - 1 } close(“c:/data/perry/data.csv”) sel.flows <- read.table(textConnection(strvec), header=FALSE, sep=",") There was also an error "no applicable method" for close. Comments gratefully received. Murray Jorgensen ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help