sink a data frame to .txt file

Question

I have a 4-column data frame named as mytable with hundreds of rows. It looks like

id         name                   count        rate
234     uert e@3 erwafrw         


        

Answer 1

seems like write.table() should be OK. just specify a seperator, like ",", or something else not appearing in your name column:

    my.df <- data.frame(ID=c(234,324,329,123), 
      name = c("uert e@3 erwafrw23 weq"," awrt%rw-fref-sfr-32 eq","jiowerfhguy qwhrb","234huib|f|wer fwfqwasgre"),
      count = c(34,78,90,54), rate = c(2,4,8,3))

    write.table(my.df, file = "my.df.txt", sep = ",", col.names = colnames(my.df))

    # read it back in
    my.df2 <- read.table(file = "my.df.txt",sep = ",", header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE) 

    all(my.df == my.df2) 
    TRUE

Answer 2

You seem confused about the difference between a file and the console output. There is no limitation to the width of lines with write.table, at least not ones you will approach in normal use. You can control the console screen width with options(width=72) and use capture.output(print(mytable)) so the ouput meets whatever unstated width requirements you might have.