Reading and writing data

The first step in any kind of data analysis in R is to load data, that is, to import a dataset into the environment. Before that, we have to figure out the type of data file and choose appropriate tools to read the data.

Reading and writing text-format data in a file

Among all the file types used to store data, perhaps the most widely used one is CSV. In a typical CSV file, the first line is the header of columns, and each subsequent line represents a data record with columns separated by commas. Here is an example of student records written in this format:

Name,Gender,Age,Major
Ken,Male,24,Finance
Ashley,Female,25,Statistics
Jennifer,Female,23,Computer Science

Importing data via RStudio IDE

RStudio provides an interactive way to import data. You can navigate to Tools | Import Dataset | From Local File and choose a local file in a text format, such as .csv and .txt. Then, you can adjust the parameters and preview the resulting data frame:

Note that you should check Strings...