[R-Forge #5422] fread: Support for files where header rows are separated from data

[arunsrinivasan]

Submitted by: Dirk Jonker; Assigned to: Nobody; R-Forge link

Example file:
http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/datafiles3/vorigemaand.txt

Column names are on row 48, data starts at row 50. Row 49 is empty. It is not possible to use fread to read only row 48.

Two possible solutions I could think of:

• Add a parameter, e.g. headerrow=48
• Skip empty row(s) between header and data, if header contains the same number of fields (more dangerous, but possibly more user friendly)

[arunsrinivasan]

With the new blank.lines.skip we can now do:

x = 'a,b,c\n1,2,3\n4,5,6\nx,y\n\n1,2\n3,4"
fread(x, skip=2L, blank.lines.skip=TRUE)
#    x y
# 1: 1 2
# 2: 3 4