Introduction
Often, after conducting an analysis or manipulating a data frame in R, you might want to save your results for further use or share your findings with others. One way to do this is by exporting the data frame to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore various methods to export data frames to a CSV file in R, using the write.csv, write_csv and fwrite functions provided by R’s utils, readr and data.table packages respectively.
1. Exporting Data Frames using the write.csv Function
The write.csv function is part of R’s built-in utils package and offers a straightforward method for writing a data frame to a CSV file.
Step 1: Prepare a data frame
We will first prepare a data frame. For instance:
# Create a data frame
df <- data.frame(
Name = c("John", "Sara", "Laura", "Bob"),
Age = c(23, 27, 22, 24),
Height = c(5.8, 5.4, 5.6, 5.9),
Weight = c(68, 59, 65, 73)
)Step 2: Write the data frame to a CSV file
You can use the write.csv function to write the data frame to a CSV file:
write.csv(df, "data.csv", row.names = FALSE)Here, “data.csv” is the name of the CSV file to be created. The argument row.names = FALSE is used to prevent writing row names to the file. If you want to include the row names, you can set this argument to TRUE.
2. Exporting Data Frames using the write_csv Function from readr package
The readr package, part of the tidyverse collection of packages, offers a faster and more efficient alternative for writing CSV files through its write_csv function.
Step 1: Installing the readr package
If you haven’t already installed the readr package, you can do so using the install.packages() function:
install.packages("readr")Step 2: Loading the readr package
Once the package is installed, load it into your R environment:
library(readr)Step 3: Write the data frame to a CSV file
You can use the write_csv function from the readr package to write the data frame to a CSV file:
write_csv(df, "data.csv")In this function, the first argument is the data frame you want to write, and the second argument is the name of the CSV file to be created. The write_csv function does not write row names to the file.
3. Exporting Data Frames using the fwrite Function from data.table package
The data.table package offers the fwrite function, which can be incredibly fast, especially for large data frames.
Step 1: Installing the data.table package
You can install the data.table package using the install.packages() function:
install.packages("data.table")Step 2: Loading the data.table package
Once the package is installed, load it into your R environment:
library(data.table)Step 3: Write the data frame to a CSV file
Use the fwrite function to write the data frame to a CSV file:
fwrite(df, "data.csv")The fwrite function also doesn’t write row names to the file by default.
Conclusion
In this guide, we’ve explored three different methods to export a data frame to a CSV file in R, each with its advantages. The write.csv function provides a straightforward way to write CSV files and comes built into R. The write_csv function from the readr package offers a more efficient alternative, especially for larger data sets, while the fwrite function from the data.table package is known for its speed, making it an excellent choice for extremely large data frames.