You can use the scan() function in R to read data from a file into a vector or list.

This function uses the following basic syntax:

scan(file = “”, what = double(), …)

where:

• file: The name of the file to read the data from.
• what: The type of data to be read.

Refer to the R documentation for a complete list of additional arguments you can use with the scan() function.

The following example shows how to use the scan() function in practice.

Example: How to Use scan() Function in R

Suppose I have a CSV file called data.csv saved in the following location:

C:\Users\Bob\Desktop\data.csv

And suppose the CSV file contains the following data:

team, points, assists
'A', 78, 12
'B', 85, 20
'C', 93, 23
'D', 90, 8
'E', 91, 14

You can use the scan() function with the following code to quickly read the data from this file into R:

#read in data.csv into list
data <- scan("C:\\Users\\Bob\\Desktop\\data.csv", what = list("", "", ""))

#view data
data

[[1]]
[1] "team" "A"    "B"    "C"    "D"    "E"   

[[2]]
[1] "points" "78"     "85"     "93"     "90"     "91"    

[[3]]
[1] "assists" "12"      "20"      "23"      "8"       "14"

The scan() function has successfully read the data from the file into a list.

We can verify that this object is a list by using the class() function:

#view class of data object
class(data)

[1] "list"

From the output we can see that the object is indeed a list.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to import other file types into R:

How to Import Excel Files into R
How to Import CSV Files into R
How to Import TSV Files into R
How to Import Zip Files into R