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

This solution takes full advantage of scan()'s what argument, and seems simpler (to me) than any of the others:

x <- scan(file = textConnection("Cat 14 Dog 15 Horse 16"), 
          what = list(Animal=character(), Number=numeric()))

# Convert x (at this point a list) into a data.frame
as.data.frame(x)
#   Animal Number
# 1    Cat     14
# 2    Dog     15
# 3  Horse     16