Re: [R] Optimized File Reading with R If it's a matrix, use scan().  If the columns are not all the same type, use the colClasses argument to read.table() to specify their types, instead of leaving it to R to guess.  That will speed things up quite a lot. Andy  From: Lorenzo Isella >  > Dear All, > Hope I am not bumping into a FAQ, but so far my online search  > has been fruitless > I need to read some data file using R. I am using the (I think) > standard command: >  > data_150<-read.table("y_complete06000", header=FALSE) >  > where y_complete06000 is a 6000 by 40 table of numbers. > I am puzzled at the fact that R is taking several minutes to  > read this file. > First I thought it may have been due to its shape, but even > re-expressing and saving the matrix as a 1D array does not help. > It is not a small file, but not even huge (it amounts to about 5Mb of > text file). > Is there anything I can do to speed up the file reading? > Many thanks >  > Lorenzo >  > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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. >  >  >  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notice:  This e-mail message, together with any attachments,...{{dropped}} ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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.