How to import data from clibboard to a data-frame in R

Question

One of the advantages of using spreadsheet is that we can import data from the Clipboard.

Is there any way to do it in R?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. But there are differences in Windows and Mac:

On Windows:

You can use the function readClipboard().

x <- readClipboard()

This will paste the Clipboard data as text in x. If the Clipboard data is tabular (a table, for example), you can use the function read.table()

x <- read.table(file = "clipboard", sep = "\t")

On the Mac:

On Mac, you will use the function pipe along with read.table.

x <- read.table(pipe("pbpaste"), sep="\t")