read.table multiple Txt files in R

Question

I need to read multiple Txt file in R to create a unique dataset and export it on Excel. this is what I used

BHCFYYMM <- read.table('bhcf1803.txt''bhcf1806.txt''bhcf1809.txt''bhcf1812.txt', sep="^", nrows=1300, comment.char="", header=TRUE, quote="", na.strings="--------", as.is=TRUE)
setwd("/Users/marco/Desktop/research/silvio")
getwd()
write.table(BHCFYYMM, file = "HoldingCompanyData.csv", sep = ",")

but i get this error: Error: unexpected string constant in "BHCFYYMM <- read.table('bhcf1803.txt''bhcf1806.txt'"

Any idea how I can approach this?

See [this question](https://stackoverflow.com/q/11433432/1270695) for how to read multiple files at once. — A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1, Dec 08 '20 at 04:34
Does this answer your question? [How to import multiple .csv files at once?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11433432/how-to-import-multiple-csv-files-at-once) — kangaroo_cliff, Dec 08 '20 at 05:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 08 '20 at 05:52

Your code likely failed because you can not give read.table() multiple file paths at once.

You can instead use lapply() to feed a list of file paths to read.table(). The tables can then be combined using dplyr::bind_rows().

(assuming the other parameters you have provided are correct)

# Load dplyr
# install.packages("dplyr")
library(dplyr)

# It is usually best practice to set your working directory before you do anything else.
setwd("/Users/marco/Desktop/research/silvio")

# Make list of files.
files <- c("bhcf1803.txt", "bhcf1806.txt", "bhcf1809.txt", "bhcf1812.txt")

# Read files into a list of tables.
tables <- lapply(X = files, FUN = read.table, sep = "^", nrows = 1300, comment.char = "", header = TRUE, quote = "", na.strings = "--------", as.is = TRUE)

# Bind tables together into a single table.
BHCFYYMM <- bind_rows(tables)

# Write table to a new file.
write.table(BHCFYYMM, file = "HoldingCompanyData.csv", sep = ",")

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '20 at 05:29

I don't know what is in a text file but this is what I generally do if I want to import multiple files and bind them

#set working directory
setwd("C:/xxxx/xxxx/Desktop/DUMP/")

#select the pattern of the file extension

files <- list.files(pattern=".txt")

#read all the files and bind the rows
tbl<-lapply(files, read.table) %>% bind_rows()

read.table multiple Txt files in R

2 Answers2