Reading two-line headers in R

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I would do two steps, assuming we know that the first row contains the labels, and there are always two headers.

header <- scan("file.txt", nlines = 1, what = character())
data <- read.table("file.txt", skip = 2, header = FALSE)

Then add the character vector header on as the names component:

names(data) <- header

For your data this would be

header <- scan("data.txt", nlines = 1, what = character())
data <- read.table("data.txt", skip = 2, header = FALSE)
names(data) <- header

head(data)

>     head(data)
  trt biomass  yield
1  C2   17.76 205.92
2  C2   17.96 207.86
3  CC   17.72 197.22
4  CC   18.42 205.20
5 CCW   18.15 200.51
6 CCW   17.45 190.59

If you want the units, as per @DWin’s answer, then do a second scan() on line 2

header2 <- scan("data.txt", skip = 1, nlines = 1, what = character())
names(data) <- paste0(header, header2)

> head(data)
  trtcrop biomassMg/ha yieldbu/ac
1      C2        17.76     205.92
2      C2        17.96     207.86
3      CC        17.72     197.22
4      CC        18.42     205.20
5     CCW        18.15     200.51
6     CCW        17.45     190.59

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