Handling CSV files
Let's learn how to input and output data using .csv files
What are CSV
files?
A CSV
file is a Comma Separated Values file. It’s just like any other ordinary text file, however, it has the .csv
extension and uses special characters as separators between data.
Suppose we have a table of students’ names, their ages, and their scores on a particular test. The table will look something like this.
Name | Age | Marks |
---|---|---|
Andrew | 28 | 55.2 |
Mathew | 23 | 99.5 |
Dany | 29 | 71 |
Philip | 29 | 21.9 |
John | 28 | 44 |
Brian | 23 | 11.5 |
Monica | 29 | 45 |
In a .csv
file format, we can store the above data as:
Name, Age, Marks
Andrew, 28, 55.2
Mathew, 23, 99.5
Dany, 29, 71
Philip, 29, 21.9
John, 28, 44
Brian, 23, 11.5
Monica, 29, 45
CSV files can be used for exchanging data between different applications that is input and output data. CSV files mostly use the comma character to separate (or delimit) data, but sometimes use other characters, like semicolons ;
.
Taking Input from CSV
file
Taking input from a .csv
file is easy. We use the function read.csv()
to fetch all the data. Simply pass the file path to this function and you will get all the data.
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