How can I parse CSV data from a character vector to extract a data frame?
You can use textConnection() to pass the character vector to read.table(). An example:
x <- "first,second\nthird,fourth\n"x1 <- read.table(textConnection(x), sep = ",")# x1 V1 V21 first second2 third fourthAnswer found in the R mailing list.
2017 EDIT
Seven years later, I'd probably do it like this:
read.table(text = x, sep = ",")
A minor addendum to neilfws's answer. This wrapper function is great for helping answer questions on stackoverflow when the questioner has placed raw data in their question rather than providing a data frame.
textToTable <- function(text, ...){ dfr <- read.table(tc <- textConnection(text), ...) close(tc) dfr}With usage, e.g.
textToTable("first,second\nthird,fourth\n", sep = ",")