Read fixed width text file

by

This is a fixed width file. Use read.fwf() to read it:

x <- read.fwf(
  file=url("http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst8110.for"),
  skip=4,
  widths=c(12, 7, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4))

head(x)

            V1   V2   V3   V4   V5   V6   V7   V8  V9
1  03JAN1990   23.4 -0.4 25.1 -0.3 26.6  0.0 28.6 0.3
2  10JAN1990   23.4 -0.8 25.2 -0.3 26.6  0.1 28.6 0.3
3  17JAN1990   24.2 -0.3 25.3 -0.3 26.5 -0.1 28.6 0.3
4  24JAN1990   24.4 -0.5 25.5 -0.4 26.5 -0.1 28.4 0.2
5  31JAN1990   25.1 -0.2 25.8 -0.2 26.7  0.1 28.4 0.2
6  07FEB1990   25.8  0.2 26.1 -0.1 26.8  0.1 28.4 0.3

Update

The package readr (released April, 2015) provides a simple and fast alternative.

library(readr)

x <- read_fwf(
  file="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst8110.for",   
  skip=4,
  fwf_widths(c(12, 7, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4, 9, 4)))

Speed comparison: readr::read_fwf() was ~2x faster than utils::read.fwf ().

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