readBin {base}

R Documentation

Transfer Binary Data To and From Connections

Description

Read binary data from a connection, or write binary data to a connection.

Usage

readBin(con, what, n = 1L, size = NA_integer_, signed = TRUE,
        endian = .Platform$endian)

writeBin(object, con, size = NA_integer_,
         endian = .Platform$endian)

Arguments

con	A connection object or a character string naming a file or a raw vector.
what	Either an object whose mode will give the mode of the vector to be read, or a character vector of length one describing the mode: one of "numeric", "double", "integer", "int", "logical", "complex", "character", "raw".
n	integer. The (maximal) number of records to be read. You can use an over-estimate here, but not too large as storage is reserved for n items.
size	integer. The number of bytes per element in the byte stream. The default, NA_integer_, uses the natural size. Size changing is not supported for raw and complex vectors.
signed	logical. Only used for integers of sizes 1 and 2, when it determines if the quantity on file should be regarded as a signed or unsigned integer.
endian	The endian-ness ("big" or "little" of the target system for the file. Using "swap" will force swapping endian-ness.
object	An R object to be written to the connection.

Details

If con is a character string, the functions call file to obtain an file connection which is opened for the duration of the function call.

If the connection is open it is read/written from its current position. If it is not open, it is opened for the duration of the call in an appropriate mode (binary read or write) and then closed again. An open connection must be in binary mode.

If readBin is called with con a raw vector, the data in the vector is used as input. If writeBin is called with con a raw vector, it is just an indication that a raw vector should be returned.

If size is specified and not the natural size of the object, each element of the vector is coerced to an appropriate type before being written or as it is read. Possible sizes are 1, 2, 4 and possibly 8 for integer or logical vectors, and 4, 8 and possibly 12/16 for numeric vectors. (Note that coercion occurs as signed types except if signed = FALSE when reading integers of sizes 1 and 2.) Changing sizes is unlikely to preserve NAs, and the extended precision sizes are unlikely to be portable across platforms.

readBin and writeBin read and write C-style zero-terminated character strings. Input strings are limited to 10000 characters. readChar and writeChar can be used to read and write fixed-length strings. No check is made that the string is valid in the current locale.

Handling R's missing and special (Inf, -Inf and NaN) values is discussed in the R Data Import/Export manual.

Value

For readBin, a vector of appropriate mode and length the number of items read (which might be less than n).

For writeBin, a raw vector (if con is a raw vector) or invisibly NULL.

Note

Integer read/writes of size 8 will be available if either C type long is of size 8 bytes or C type long long exists and is of size 8 bytes.

Real read/writes of size sizeof(long double) (usually 12 or 16 bytes) will be available only if that type is available and different from double.

If readBin(what = character()) is used incorrectly on a file which does not contain C-style character strings, warnings (usually many) are given. From a file or connection, the input will be broken into pieces of length 10000 with any final part being discarded.

See Also

The R Data Import/Export manual.

readChar to read/write fixed-length strings.

connections, readLines, writeLines.

.Machine for the sizes of long, long long and long double.

Examples

zz <- file("testbin", "wb")
writeBin(1:10, zz)
writeBin(pi, zz, endian="swap")
writeBin(pi, zz, size=4)
writeBin(pi^2, zz, size=4, endian="swap")
writeBin(pi+3i, zz)
writeBin("A test of a connection", zz)
z <- paste("A very long string", 1:100, collapse=" + ")
writeBin(z, zz)
if(.Machine$sizeof.long == 8 || .Machine$sizeof.longlong == 8)
    writeBin(as.integer(5^(1:10)), zz, size = 8)
if((s <-.Machine$sizeof.longdouble) > 8)
    writeBin((pi/3)^(1:10), zz, size = s)
close(zz)

zz <- file("testbin", "rb")
readBin(zz, integer(), 4)
readBin(zz, integer(), 6)
readBin(zz, numeric(), 1, endian="swap")
readBin(zz, numeric(), size=4)
readBin(zz, numeric(), size=4, endian="swap")
readBin(zz, complex(), 1)
readBin(zz, character(), 1)
z2 <- readBin(zz, character(), 1)
if(.Machine$sizeof.long == 8 || .Machine$sizeof.longlong == 8)
    readBin(zz, integer(), 10,  size = 8)
if((s <-.Machine$sizeof.longdouble) > 8)
    readBin(zz, numeric(), 10, size = s)
close(zz)
unlink("testbin")
stopifnot(z2 == z)

## signed vs unsigned ints
zz <- file("testbin", "wb")
x <- as.integer(seq(0, 255, 32))
writeBin(x, zz, size=1)
writeBin(x, zz, size=1)
x <- as.integer(seq(0, 60000, 10000))
writeBin(x, zz, size=2)
writeBin(x, zz, size=2)
close(zz)
zz <- file("testbin", "rb")
readBin(zz, integer(), 8, size=1)
readBin(zz, integer(), 8, size=1, signed=FALSE)
readBin(zz, integer(), 7, size=2)
readBin(zz, integer(), 7, size=2, signed=FALSE)
close(zz)
unlink("testbin")

## use of raw
z <- writeBin(pi^{1:5}, raw(), size = 4)
readBin(z, numeric(), 5, size = 4)
z <- writeBin(c("a", "test", "of", "character"), raw())
rawToChar(z)
readBin(z, character(), 4)

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