R Reading in a zip data file without unzipping it

Question

I have a very large zip file and i am trying to read it into R without unzipping it like so:

temp <- tempfile(\"Sales\", fileext=c(\"zip\"))
data <- re         


        

Answer 1

The gzfile function along with read_csv and read.table can read compressed files.

library(readr)
df = read_csv(gzfile("file.csv.gz"))

library(data.table)
df = read.table(gzfile("file.csv.gz"))

read_csv from the readr package can read compressed files even without using gzfile function.

library(readr)  
df = read_csv("file.csv.gz")

read_csv is recommended because it is faster than read.table

Answer 2

In this expression you lost a dot

temp <- tempfile("Sales", fileext=c("zip"))

It should be:

temp <- tempfile("Sales", fileext=c(".zip"))

Answer 3

This should work just fine if the file is sales.csv.

data <- readr::read_csv(unzip("Sales.zip", "Sales.csv"))

To check the filename without extracting the file. This works

unzip("sales.zip", list = TRUE)

Answer 4

If you have zcat installed on your system (which is the case for linux, macos, and cygwin) you could also use:

zipfile<-"test.zip"
myData <- read.delim(pipe(paste("zcat", zipfile)))

This solution also has the advantage that no temporary files are created.

Answer 5

The methods of the readr package also support compressed files if the file suffix indicates the nature of the file, that is files ending in .gz, .bz2, .xz, or .zip will be automatically uncompressed.

require(readr)
myData <- read_csv("foo.txt.gz")

Answer 6

If your zip file is called Sales.zip and contains only a file called Sales.dat, I think you can simply do the following (assuming the file is in your working directory):

data <- read.table(unz("Sales.zip", "Sales.dat"), nrows=10, header=T, quote="\"", sep=",")