Import text file using ff package

Question

I have a textfile of 4.5 million rows and 90 columns to import into R. Using `read.table` I get the `cannot allocate vector of size...` error message so am trying to import using the ff package before subsetting the data to extract the observations which interest me (see my previous question for more details: Add selection crteria to read.table). So, I use the following code to import: ``` test<-read.csv2.ffdf("FD_INDCVIZC_2010.txt", header=T) ``` but this returns the following error message : ``` Error in read.table.ffdf(FUN = "read.csv2", ...) : only ffdf objects can be used for appending (and skipping the first.row chunk) ``` What am I doing wrong? Here are the first 5 rows of the text file: ``` CANTVILLE.NUMMI.AEMMR.AGED.AGER20.AGEREV.AGEREVQ.ANAI.ANEMR.APAF.ARM.ASCEN.BAIN.BATI.CATIRIS.CATL.CATPC.CHAU.CHFL.CHOS.CLIM.CMBL.COUPLE.CS1.CUIS.DEPT.DEROU.DIPL.DNAI.EAU.EGOUL.ELEC.EMPL.ETUD.GARL.HLML.ILETUD.ILT.IMMI.INAI.INATC.INFAM.INPER.INPERF.IPO ... 1 1601;1;8;052;54;051;050;1956;03;1;…

Accepted Answer

I encountered a similar problem related to reading csv into ff objects. On using

```
read.csv2.ffdf(file = "FD_INDCVIZC_2010.txt") 
```

instead of implicit call

```
read.csv2.ffdf("FD_INDCVIZC_2010.txt")
```

I got rid of the error. The explicitly passing values to the argument seems specific to `ff` functions.

Import text file using ff package

Solution

Problem