R tools in readr for reading in fixed width files and other formats (CC249)

September 19, 2022 • PD Schloss • 1 min read

The readr R package numerous tools for reading in various types of text files including fixed width files (fwf), tab separated values (tsv) files, and comma separated values (csv) files. In this episode Pat shows how to read in fwf files with read_fwf and some useful tools that are shared across readr functions for making it easier to read in one or many files. He also discusses various arguments in the tar program for extracting files from compressed archives to specific directories. The overall goal of this project is to highlight reproducible research practices using a number of tools. The specific output from this project will be a map-based visual that shows the level of drought across the globe.

Code

You can browse the state of the repository at the