Speed up import of fixed width format table in R

Question

I'm importing table from a fixed width format .txt file in R. This table has about 100 observations and 200000 lines (a few lines below).

11111 2008  7 31 21 2008  8  1 21 3  4  6 18 4    7 0 12 0  0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0      5 0 0 7   5 0 1 0  2 0   0 0  0 0 0  2 0 0    0.0 5  14.9 0  14.9 0  14.0 0  16.5 0  14.9 0  15.6 0  15.3 0 0  15.6 0  15.6 0  17.6 0  16.1 0 17.10 0 1  97 0  0.60 0 1  15.1 0  986.6 0 1002.9 0  7 0  0.2 0
11111 2008  8  1  0 2008  8  1  0 4  7  6 18 4 98 0 1  9 0  0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0      5 0 0 7 0 0 0 1 0  2 0 260 0  1 0 0  2 0 0    0.0 5  14.4 0  14.4 0  13.0 0  14.9 0  14.9 0  15.2 0  14.6 0 0  15.2 0  14.8 0  16.1 0  15.7 0 16.10 0 1  93 0  1.20 0 1  14.1 0  986.1 0 1002.4 0  7 0  0.5 0
11111 2008  8  1  3 2008  8  1  3 5 10  6 18 4 98 0 1  3 0  0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0      5 0 0 7   5 0 1 0  2 0 200 0  1 0 0  4 0 0    0.0 5  25.8 0       7  14.4 0  26.0 0  26.0 0  19.8 0  17.0 0 0  19.8 0  15.2 0  20.1 0  20.1 0 17.10 0 1  74 0  6.00 0 1  15.1 0  984.5 0 1000.6 0  8 0  1.6 0
11111 2008  8  1  6 2008  8  1  6 6 13  6 18 4 98 0 1  7 0  6 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1000 0 1 0 7   5 0 1 0  2 0 230 0  2 0 0  8 0 0    0.0 5  36.0 0       5       5  40.0 0  36.0 0  23.7 0  17.4 0 0  23.7 0  19.8 0  24.6 0  24.0 0 14.80 0 1  51 0 14.50 0 1  12.8 0  983.9 0  999.7 0  6 0  0.6 0
11111 2008  8  1  9 2008  8  1  9 7 16  6 18 4 96 0 0  9 0  9 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 1200 0 0 0 7   5 0   7 95 0 300 0  3 0 0 13 0 0    0.0 5  23.5 0       5       5  43.8 0  23.6 0  19.6 0  17.3 0 0  19.6 0  19.6 0  26.0 0  19.8 0 17.90 0 1  79 0  4.90 0 1  15.8 0  981.9 0  997.9 0  8 0  2.0 0

Right now, I'm using the following code leading to a pretty long loading (about 1 minute):

col_width <- c(5,5,3,3,3,5,3,3,3,2,
           3,3,3,2,3,2,2,3,2,3,
           2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,
           2,5,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,
           2,3,2,4,2,3,2,2,3,2,
           2,7,2,6,2,6,2,6,2,6,
           2,6,2,6,2,6,2,2,6,2,
           6,2,6,2,6,2,6,2,2,4,
           2,6,2,2,6,2,7,2,7,2,
           3,2,5,2)

df.h.tomsk <- read.fwf(path, 
                       widths=col_width, 
                       header=FALSE, 
                       sep="\t", 
                       nrows=200000, 
                       comment.char="",
                       buffersize=5000)

Any suggestion(s) to accelerate the process? For example is there something like fread from data.table working with fwf format?

Answer 1

Have you tried using fread of library(data.table)? Please copy paste some lines of your file to check it...