ABSTRACT
Reading and writing data, either on the local computer or over the Internet, is often an important part of a computational task. In this chapter we discuss the different ways in which R interacts with the file system and other external resources. There are a number of functions specifically oriented toward reading and writing from files, some specifically designed for reading formatted data and others for a variety of other interactions. There is some fragmentation and redundancy, and almost all tasks can be carried out using connections.
