Why the field separator character must be only one byte?
data <- read.delim("C:\\test.txt", header = FALSE, sep = "$$$$$") Error in scan(file, what = "", sep = sep, quote = quote, nlines = 1, quiet = TRUE, : invalid 'sep' value: must be one byte Why there is a restriction like this? Can I overcome it? Here is a potential solution. Assuming this is what the lines in your file look like 1$$$$$2$$$$$3$$$$$4 The following will create a matrix with the variables stored as characters. do.call(rbind,strsplit(readLines('test.txt'),'$$$$$',fixed=T)) 来源: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2732397/why-the-field-separator-character-must-be-only-one-byte