Question

If there are many blank lines in a file, how to delete blank lines with readLines in R?

I know I can use blank.lines.skip=Tin read.table to delete it, how about in readLines?

Also, how do I delete the last \n with readLines?

Answer 1

A reproducible example:

  Z <- readLines(textConnection("line1 , stuff, other stuff\nline2 ,junk\nline3, a blank two lines follow\n\n\nline6\n"))
>     Z
[1] "line1 , stuff, other stuff"      "line2 ,junk"                     "line3, a blink two lines follow"
[4] ""                                ""                                "line6"                          
[7] ""                               
>     Z1 <- Z[sapply(Z, nchar) > 0] # the zero length lines get removed.
> Z1
[1] "line1 , stuff, other stuff"      "line2 ,junk"                     "line3, a blank two lines follow"
[4] "line6"          

@Andrie was suggesting you do something like this:

> Z <- scan(textConnection("line1 , stuff, other stuff\nline2 ,junk\nline3, a blink two lines follow\n\n\nline6\n"), 
            what="", sep="\n",blank.lines.skip=TRUE)
Read 4 items
>     Z
[1] "line1 , stuff, other stuff"      "line2 ,junk"                     "line3, a blink two lines follow"
[4] "line6"