Get Started

skip and n_max

Through skip and n_max you can control which part of your flat file you're actually importing into R.

  • skip specifies the number of lines you're ignoring in the flat file before actually starting to import data.
  • n_max specifies the number of lines you're actually importing.

Say for example you have a CSV file with 20 lines, and set skip = 2 and n_max = 3, you're only reading in lines 3, 4 and 5 of the file.

Watch out: Once you skip some lines, you also skip the first line that can contain column names!

potatoes.txt (view), a flat file with tab-delimited records and without column names, is available in your workspace.

This is a part of the course

“Introduction to Importing Data in R”

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • Finish the first read_tsv() call to import observations 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 from potatoes.txt.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Column names
properties <- c("area", "temp", "size", "storage", "method",
                "texture", "flavor", "moistness")

# Import 5 observations from potatoes.txt: potatoes_fragment
potatoes_fragment <- read_tsv("potatoes.txt", skip = ___, n_max = ___, col_names = properties)
Edit and Run Code