zipfR (version 0.6-70)

read.multiple.objects: Reading Multiple Objects from Files (zipfR)

Description

read.multiple.objects constructs a list of spc, vgc or tfl objects from a set of input text files in the specified directory

NB: This function is intended for users that want to run advanced experiments (e.g., handling hundreds of spectra generated in multiple randomizations experiments). For the standard one-object-at-a-time reading functionality, look at the documentation of read.spc, read.vgc and read.tfl

Usage

read.multiple.objects(directory, prefix, class=c("spc", "vgc", "tfl"))

Arguments

directory

character string specifying the directory where the target input files reside (absolute path, or path relative to current working directory)

prefix

character string specifying prefix that must be shared by all target input file names

class

one of spc, vgc or tfl as character string, specifying the class of object we are importing (see the manpages of spc, vgc and tfl for details)

Value

read.multiple.objects returns a list of objects of the specified class; each object is indexed with the id extracted from the corresponding file name (see section "Format")

Format

read.multiple.objects reads in all files matching the pattern prefix.id.class from the specified directory, where the prefix and class strings are passed as arguments, and id is an arbitrary string that is used as index of the corresponding object in the output list

read.multiple.objects calls the read function corresponding to the class argument. Thus, the input files must respect the formatting conventions of the relevant reading functions (see documentation of read.spc, read.vgc and read.tfl)

See Also

See the spc, vgc and tfl manpages for details on the corresponding objects; read.spc, read.vgc and read.tfl for the single-file reading functions and input format details

Examples

# NOT RUN {
## These are just illustrative examples. Users should fill in their
## own files instead of the dummy names used here.

## suppose that the current working directory contains
## 100 spc files named: rand.1.spc, rand.2.spc, ...,
## rand.100.spc

## read the files in:
spc.list <- read.multiple.objects(".","rand","spc")

## you can access each spc using the id extracted from
## the file name, e.g.:
summary(spc.list[["1"]])

## more usefully, you might want to iterate over the
## whole list, e.g., to calculate mean V:
mean(sapply(spc.list,V))

## notice that ids are arbitrary strings
## e.g., suppose that directory /home/me/animals
## contains sounds.dog.vgc and sounds.elephant.vgc

## we read the vgcs in:
vgc.list <- read.multiple.objects("/home/me/animals","sounds","vgc")

## accessing the elephant vgc:
V(vgc.list[["elephant"]])

## of course, tfl-reading works in the same way (assuming
## that the animals directory also contains some tfl files):
tfl.list <- read.multiple.objects("/home/me/animals","sounds","tfl")
# }