Chapter 1. Hello, Data!

Most projects in R start with loading at least some data into the running R session. As R supports a variety of file formats and database backend, there are several ways to do so. In this chapter, we will not deal with basic data structures, which are already familiar to you, but will concentrate on the performance issue of loading larger datasets and dealing with special file formats.

Note

For a quick overview on the standard tools and to refresh your knowledge on importing general data, please see Chapter 7 of the official An Introduction to R manual of CRAN at http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.html#Reading-data-from-files or Rob Kabacoff's Quick-R site, which offers keywords and cheat-sheets for most general ...

Get Mastering Data Analysis with R now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.