% File src/library/base/man/readLines.Rd
% Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 1995-2007 R Core Development Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{readLines}
\alias{readLines}
\title{Read Text Lines from a Connection}
\description{
  Read some or all text lines from a connection.
}
\usage{
readLines(con = stdin(), n = -1, ok = TRUE, warn = TRUE,
          encoding = "unknown")
}
\arguments{
  \item{con}{a connection object or a character string.}
  \item{n}{integer.  The (maximal) number of lines to
    read.  Negative values indicate that one should read up to the end of
    the connection.}
  \item{ok}{logical.  Is it OK to reach the end of the connection before
    \code{n > 0} lines are read?  If not, an error will be generated.}
  \item{warn}{logical.  Warn if a text file is missing a final EOL.}
  \item{encoding}{encoding to be assumed for input strings.  It is
    used to mark character strings as known to be in
    Latin-1 or UTF-8: it is not used to re-encode the input.  To do the
    latter, specify the encoding as part of the connection \code{con} or
    via \code{\link{options}(encoding=)}.}
}
\details{
  If the \code{con} is a character string, the function calls
  \code{\link{file}} to obtain a file connection which is opened for
  the duration of the function call.

  If the connection is open it is read from its current position.
  If it is not open, it is opened for the duration of the call and then
  closed again.

  If the final line is incomplete (no final EOL marker) the behaviour
  depends on whether the connection is blocking or not.  For a blocking
  text-mode connection (or a non-text-mode connection) the line
  will be accepted, with a warning.  For a non-blocking text-mode
  connection the incomplete line is pushed back, silently.

  Whatever mode the connection is opened in, any of LF, CRLF or CR will
  be accepted as the EOL marker for a line.
}
\value{
  A character vector of length the number of lines read.

  The elements of the result have a declared encoding if \code{encoding} is
  \code{"latin1"} or \code{"UTF-8"},
}
\note{
  The default connection, \code{\link{stdin}}, may be different from
  \code{con = "stdin"}: see \code{\link{file}}.
}
\seealso{
  \code{\link{connections}}, \code{\link{writeLines}}, \code{\link{readBin}},
  \code{\link{scan}}}

\examples{
cat("TITLE extra line", "2 3 5 7", "", "11 13 17", file="ex.data",
    sep="\n")
readLines("ex.data", n=-1)
unlink("ex.data") # tidy up

## difference in blocking
cat("123\nabc", file = "test1")
readLines("test1") # line with a warning

con <- file("test1", "r", blocking = FALSE)
readLines(con) # empty
cat(" def\n", file = "test1", append = TRUE)
readLines(con) # gets both
close(con)

unlink("test1") # tidy up
}
\keyword{file}
\keyword{connection}