Importing one long line of data into R

Question

I have a large data file consisting of a single line of text. The format resembles

Cat    14  Dog    15  Horse  16

I\'d eventually like to get

Answer 1

Here is another approach

string <- readLines(textConnection(x))
string <- gsub("(\\d+)", "\\1\n", string, perl = TRUE)
dat    <- read.table(text = string, sep = "")