write.csv: write.csv.R
Description.
Save summaries of partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk for further analyses of processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
# S3 method for default write.csv(...)
# S3 method for AlphaPart write.csv(x, file, traitsAsDir = FALSE, csv2 = TRUE, row.names = FALSE, ...)
# S3 method for summaryAlphaPart write.csv(x, file, traitsAsDir = FALSE, csv2 = TRUE, row.names = FALSE, ...)
It contains:
write.csv - see write.csv for details.
write.csv.AlphaPart - for each trait (list component in x ) a file is saved on disk with name "AlphaPart_trait.csv", where the file will hold original data and breeding value partitions. With traitsAsDir=TRUE files are saved as "trait/file_trait.csv". File names are printed on screen during the process of export and at the end invisibly returned.
write.csv.summaryAlphaPart - for each trait (list component in x ) a file partitions named "file_trait.csv" is saved on disk. With traitsAsDir=TRUE files are saved as "trait/file_trait_*.csv". File names are printed on screen during the process of export and at the end invisibly returned.
Other options passed to write.csv2 or write.csv .
AlphaPart, object returned from AlphaPart function or summaryAlphaPart, object returned from summary.AlphaPart function.
Character, file name with or without .csv extension, e.g., both "file" and "file.csv" are valid.
Logical, should results be saved within trait folders; the construction is file.path(dirname(file), trait, basename(file)) ; folders are created if they do not exist.
Logical, export using write.csv2 or write.csv .
Logical, export row names as well?

Methods (by class)
default : Default write.csv method.
AlphaPart : Save partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk on disk for further analyses or processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
summaryAlphaPart : Save summaries of partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk for further analyses of processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
Function write.csv from the utils package works when exported object is a data.frame or a matrix . This is an attempt to make this function generic so that one can define write.csv methods for other objects.
write.csv help page on the default write.csv and write.csv2 methods in the utils package; summary.AlphaPart and AlphaPart help pages on the objects of summaryAlphaPart and AlphaPart classes.
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Export CSV in R Using write.csv()
- Post author: Naveen (NNK)
- Post category: R Programming
- Post last modified: February 7, 2023
Use write.csv() to export R DataFrame to CSV file with fields separated by comma delimiter, header (column names), rows index, and values surrounded with double-quotes. You can also override this default behavior and export CSV without header, without row index or number, with no quotes e.t.c.
CSV file format is the easiest way to store scientific, analytical, or any structured data (two-dimensional with rows and columns). Data in CSV is separated by delimiter most commonly comma (,) but you can also use any character like pipe, tab e.t.c
In my last article, I explained how to import a CSV file into Data Frame , in this article, I will explain how to write or export a DataFrame to a CSV file by using different methods and their options.
1. Quick Examples
The following are quick examples of how to write/export a CSV file in R with and without header, with and without row number/index, encoding e.t.c.
Let’s create an R DataFrame , run these examples and explore the output.
Yields below output.
2. Export to CSV in R Using write.csv()
R base functions provide a write.csv() to export the DataFrame to a CSV file. By default, the exported CSV file contains headers, row index, missing data as NA values, and columns separated by comma delimiter.
Following is the syntax of the write.csv()
- input_dataframe – Input DataFrame you wanted to export.
- file – Path where you wanted to write the file.
- row.names – Use to ignore or include row names. Use value FALSE to ignore and TRUE to include. By default is set to TRUE.
2.1 Export CSV Example
Now, write the R DataFrame to a CSV file using the above syntax.
It exports the contents from the R DataFrame object df to a CSV file called new_file.csv at the specified location. In the below examples, I will cover how to exclude these in the exported CSV file.

If you want to write with different column names, rename DataFrame column names in R prior to writing.
2.2. Export CSV without Index or Row number
To export without row numbers/index use row.names argument on R write.csv() function, by default this argument is set to TRUE mean it exports the row numbers. The below examples write/export CSV without row numbers in R.

2.3. Write CSV NA as Blank (Empty String)
By default, all missing values are represented as NA on R DataFrame, and by exporting this to CSV also results in NA values for missing data. But sometimes you may want to export by replacing NA with Blank or an empty string. You can change this default behavior by exporting na argument with the blank or empty string on write.csv().
This writes or export the CSV with blank for NA values.

2.4. Export CSV without quotes
As you notice above export outputs, it writes every cell within quotes, If you want to write without quotes in CSV use quote=FALSE argument. By default, this is set to TRUE hence, write.csv() always exports with quotes.

2.5. Write CSV file with Encoding
Use fileEncoding='UTF-8' as argument to write.csv() to export DataFrame to CSV with UTF-8 encoding.
3. Export CSV without Header using write.table()
By using write.csv() you can’t export without a header in R however, you can use write.table() function with col.names=FALSE argument to export the data from DataFrame to CSV without header or column names.

4. Use write_csv() from reader package
If you are working with larger data, you should use the write_csv() function readr package. readr is a third-party library hence, in order to use readr library, you need to first install it by using install.packages('readr') . Once installation completes, load the readr library in order to use this write_csv() method. To load a library in R use library("readr") .
5. Use fwrite() from data.table package
Finally, let’s use the data.table package to write CSV in R. Using this is the best approach when you are writing very large data sets.
6. Conclusion
In this article, I have explained several R examples of how to export a CSV file without a header, without row numbers, without quotes e.t.c. Also, explained how to write CSV using write_csv() from readr and fwrite() from data.table package in R.
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- https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/AlphaPart/versions/0.9.3/topics/write.csv
- https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/utils/html/write.table.html
You may also like reading:
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write.csv.R
Description.
Save summaries of partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk for further analyses of processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
Function write.csv from the utils package works when exported object is a data.frame or a matrix . This is an attempt to make this function generic so that one can define write.csv methods for other objects.
It contains:
write.csv - see write.csv for details.
write.csv.AlphaPart - for each trait (list component in x ) a file is saved on disk with name "AlphaPart_trait.csv", where the file will hold original data and breeding value partitions. With traitsAsDir=TRUE files are saved as "trait/file_trait.csv". File names are printed on screen during the process of export and at the end invisibly returned.
write.csv.summaryAlphaPart - for each trait (list component in x ) a file partitions named "file_trait.csv" is saved on disk. With traitsAsDir=TRUE files are saved as "trait/file_trait_*.csv". File names are printed on screen during the process of export and at the end invisibly returned.
Methods (by class)
default : Default write.csv method.
AlphaPart : Save partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk on disk for further analyses or processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
summaryAlphaPart : Save summaries of partitioned breeding values to CSV files on disk for further analyses of processing with other software or just for saving (backing up) results.
write.csv help page on the default write.csv and write.csv2 methods in the utils package; summary.AlphaPart and AlphaPart help pages on the objects of summaryAlphaPart and AlphaPart classes.
- Instructor View
Reading and Writing CSV Files
Last updated on 2023-08-11 | Edit this page
- How do I read data from a CSV file into R?
- How do I write data to a CSV file?
- Read in a .csv, and explore the arguments of the csv reader.
- Write the altered data set to a new .csv, and explore the arguments.
The most common way that scientists store data is in Excel spreadsheets. While there are R packages designed to access data from Excel spreadsheets (e.g., gdata, RODBC, XLConnect, xlsx, RExcel), users often find it easier to save their spreadsheets in comma-separated values and then use R’s built in functionality to read and manipulate the data. In this short lesson, we’ll learn how to read data from a .csv and write to a new .csv, and explore the arguments that allow you read and write the data correctly for your needs.
Read a .csv and Explore the Arguments
Let’s start by opening a .csv file containing information on the speeds at which cars of different colors were clocked in 45 mph zones in the four-corners states ( CarSpeeds.csv ). We will use the built in read.csv(...) function call , which reads the data in as a data frame, and assign the data frame to a variable (using <- ) so that it is stored in R’s memory. Then we will explore some of the basic arguments that can be supplied to the function. First, open the RStudio project containing the scripts and data you were working on in episode ‘Analyzing Patient Data’.
Changing Delimiters
The default delimiter of the read.csv() function is a comma, but you can use other delimiters by supplying the ‘sep’ argument to the function (e.g., typing sep = ';' allows a semi-colon separated file to be correctly imported - see ?read.csv() for more information on this and other options for working with different file types).
The call above will import the data, but we have not taken advantage of several handy arguments that can be helpful in loading the data in the format we want. Let’s explore some of these arguments.
The header Argument
The default for read.csv(...) is to set the header argument to TRUE . This means that the first row of values in the .csv is set as header information (column names). If your data set does not have a header, set the header argument to FALSE :
Clearly this is not the desired behavior for this data set, but it may be useful if you have a dataset without headers.
The stringsAsFactors Argument
In older versions of R (prior to 4.0) this was perhaps the most important argument in read.csv() , particularly if you were working with categorical data. This is because the default behavior of R was to convert character string s into factors , which may make it difficult to do such things as replace values. It is important to be aware of this behaviour, which we will demonstrate. For example, let’s say we find out that the data collector was color blind, and accidentally recorded green cars as being blue. In order to correct the data set, let’s replace ‘Blue’ with ‘Green’ in the $Color column:
What happened?!? It looks like ‘Blue’ was replaced with ‘Green’, but every other color was turned into a number (as a character string, given the quote marks before and after). This is because the colors of the cars were loaded as factors, and the factor level was reported following replacement.
To see the internal structure, we can use another function, str() . In this case, the dataframe’s internal structure includes the format of each column, which is what we are interested in. str() will be reviewed a little more in the lesson Data Types and Structures .
We can see that the $Color and $State columns are factors and $Speed is a numeric column.
Now, let’s load the dataset using stringsAsFactors=FALSE , and see what happens when we try to replace ‘Blue’ with ‘Green’ in the $Color column:
That’s better! And we can see how the data now is read as character instead of factor. From R version 4.0 onwards we do not have to specify stringsAsFactors=FALSE , this is the default behavior.
The as.is Argument
This is an extension of the stringsAsFactors argument, but gives you control over individual columns. For example, if we want the colors of cars imported as strings, but we want the names of the states imported as factors, we would load the data set as:
Now we can see that if we try to replace ‘Blue’ with ‘Green’ in the $Color column everything looks fine, while trying to replace ‘Arizona’ with ‘Ohio’ in the $State column returns the factor numbers for the names of states that we haven’t replaced:
We can see that $Color column is a character while $State is a factor.
Updating Values in a Factor
Suppose we want to keep the colors of cars as factors for some other operations we want to perform. Write code for replacing ‘Blue’ with ‘Green’ in the $Color column of the cars dataset without importing the data with stringsAsFactors=FALSE .
Show me the solution
The strip.white argument.
It is not uncommon for mistakes to have been made when the data were recorded, for example a space (whitespace) may have been inserted before a data value. By default this whitespace will be kept in the R environment, such that ‘\ Red’ will be recognized as a different value than ‘Red’. In order to avoid this type of error, use the strip.white argument. Let’s see how this works by checking for the unique values in the $Color column of our dataset:
Here, the data recorder added a space before the color of the car in one of the cells:
Oops, we see two values for red cars.
Let’s try again, this time importing the data using the strip.white argument. NOTE - this argument must be accompanied by the sep argument, by which we indicate the type of delimiter in the file (the comma for most .csv files)
That’s better!
Specify Missing Data When Loading
It is common for data sets to have missing values, or mistakes. The convention for recording missing values often depends on the individual who collected the data and can be recorded as n.a. , -- , or empty cells ” “. R recognises the reserved character string NA as a missing value, but not some of the examples above. Let’s say the inflamation scale in the data set we used earlier inflammation-01.csv actually starts at 1 for no inflamation and the zero values ( 0 ) were a missed observation. Looking at the ?read.csv help page is there an argument we could use to ensure all zeros ( 0 ) are read in as NA ? Perhaps, in the car-speeds.csv data contains mistakes and the person measuring the car speeds could not accurately distinguish between”Black or “Blue” cars. Is there a way to specify more than one ‘string’, such as “Black” and “Blue”, to be replaced by NA
or , in car-speeds.csv use a character vector for multiple values.
Write a New .csv and Explore the Arguments
After altering our cars dataset by replacing ‘Blue’ with ‘Green’ in the $Color column, we now want to save the output. There are several arguments for the write.csv(...) function call , a few of which are particularly important for how the data are exported. Let’s explore these now.
If you open the file, you’ll see that it has header names, because the data had headers within R, but that there are numbers in the first column.
The row.names Argument
This argument allows us to set the names of the rows in the output data file. R’s default for this argument is TRUE , and since it does not know what else to name the rows for the cars data set, it resorts to using row numbers. To correct this, we can set row.names to FALSE :
Now we see:
Setting Column Names
There is also a col.names argument, which can be used to set the column names for a data set without headers. If the data set already has headers (e.g., we used the headers = TRUE argument when importing the data) then a col.names argument will be ignored.

The na Argument
There are times when we want to specify certain values for NA s in the data set (e.g., we are going to pass the data to a program that only accepts -9999 as a nodata value). In this case, we want to set the NA value of our output file to the desired value, using the na argument. Let’s see how this works:
Now we’ll set NA to -9999 when we write the new .csv file:
And we see:
- Import data from a .csv file using the read.csv(...) function.
- Understand some of the key arguments available for importing the data properly, including header , stringsAsFactors , as.is , and strip.white .
- Write data to a new .csv file using the write.csv(...) function
- Understand some of the key arguments available for exporting the data properly, such as row.names , col.names , and na .
Read and Write CSV Files in R
One of the easiest and most reliable ways of getting data into R is to use CSV files.
The CSV file (Comma Separated Values file) is a widely supported file format used to store tabular data. It uses commas to separate the different values in a line, where each line is a row of data.
R’s Built-in csv parser makes it easy to read, write, and process data from CSV files.
Read a CSV File
Suppose you have the following CSV file.
You can open a file and read its contents by using the read.csv() function specifying its name. It reads the data into a data frame.
Specify a File
When you specify the filename only, it is assumed that the file is located in the current folder. If it is somewhere else, you can specify the exact path that the file is located at.
Remember! while specifying the exact path, characters prefaced by \ (like \n \r \t etc.) are interpreted as special characters .
You can escape them by:
- Changing the backslashes to forward slashes like: "C:/data/myfile.csv"
- Using the double backslashes like: "C:\\data\\myfile.csv"
If you want to read CSV Data from the Web, substitute a URL for a file name. The read.csv() functions will read directly from the remote server.
R can also read data from FTP servers, not just HTTP servers.
Set Column Names
The read.csv() function assumes that the first line of your file is a header line. It takes the column names from the header line for the data frame.
If your file does not contain a header like the file below, then you should specify header=FALSE so that R can create column names for you (V1, V2, V3 and V4 in this case)
However, if you want to manually set the column names, you specify col.names argument.
Import the Data as is
The read.csv() function automatically coerces non-numeric data into a factor (categorical variable). You can see that by inspecting the structure of your data frame.
If you want your data interpreted as string rather than a factor, set the as.is parameter to TRUE.
Set the Classes of the Columns
You can manually set the classes of the columns using the colClasses argument.
Limit the Number of Rows Read
If you want to limit the number of rows to read in, specify nrows argument.
Handle Comma Within a Data
Sometimes your CSV file contains fields such as an address that contains a comma. This can become a problem when working with a CSV file.
To handle comma within a data, wrap it in quotes . R considers a comma in a quoted string as an ordinary character.
You can specify the character to be used for quoting using the quote argument.
Write a CSV File
To write to an existing file, use write.csv() method and pass the data in the form of matrix or data frame .
Notice that the write.csv() function prepends each row with a row name by default. If you don’t want row labels in your CSV file, set row.names to FALSE.
Notice that all the values are surrounded by double quotes by default. Set quote = FALSE to change that.
Append Data to a CSV File
By default, the write.csv() function overwrites entire file content. To append the data to a CSV File, use the write.table() method instead and set append = TRUE .
Data Output
Description.
write.table prints its required argument x (after converting it to a data frame if it is not one nor a matrix) to a file or connection .
If the table has no columns the rownames will be written only if row.names = TRUE , and vice versa .
Real and complex numbers are written to the maximal possible precision.
If a data frame has matrix-like columns these will be converted to multiple columns in the result ( via as.matrix ) and so a character col.names or a numeric quote should refer to the columns in the result, not the input. Such matrix-like columns are unquoted by default.
Any columns in a data frame which are lists or have a class (e.g., dates) will be converted by the appropriate as.character method: such columns are unquoted by default. On the other hand, any class information for a matrix is discarded and non-atomic (e.g., list) matrices are coerced to character.
Only columns which have been converted to character will be quoted if specified by quote .
The dec argument only applies to columns that are not subject to conversion to character because they have a class or are part of a matrix-like column (or matrix), in particular to columns protected by I () . Use options ("OutDec") to control such conversions.
In almost all cases the conversion of numeric quantities is governed by the option "scipen" (see options ), but with the internal equivalent of digits = 15 . For finer control, use format to make a character matrix/data frame, and call write.table on that.
These functions check for a user interrupt every 1000 lines of output.
If file is a non-open connection, an attempt is made to open it and then close it after use.
To write a Unix-style file on Windows, use a binary connection e.g. file = file("filename", "wb") .
By default there is no column name for a column of row names. If col.names = NA and row.names = TRUE a blank column name is added, which is the convention used for CSV files to be read by spreadsheets. Note that such CSV files can be read in R by
write.csv and write.csv2 provide convenience wrappers for writing CSV files. They set sep and dec (see below), qmethod = "double" , and col.names to NA if row.names = TRUE (the default) and to TRUE otherwise.
write.csv uses "." for the decimal point and a comma for the separator.
write.csv2 uses a comma for the decimal point and a semicolon for the separator, the Excel convention for CSV files in some Western European locales.
These wrappers are deliberately inflexible: they are designed to ensure that the correct conventions are used to write a valid file. Attempts to change append , col.names , sep , dec or qmethod are ignored, with a warning.
CSV files do not record an encoding, and this causes problems if they are not ASCII for many other applications. Windows Excel 2007/10 will open files (e.g., by the file association mechanism) correctly if they are ASCII or UTF-16 (use fileEncoding = "UTF-16LE" ) or perhaps in the current Windows codepage (e.g., "CP1252" ), but the ‘Text Import Wizard’ (from the ‘Data’ tab) allows far more choice of encodings. Excel:mac 2004/8 can import only ‘Macintosh’ (which seems to mean Mac Roman), ‘Windows’ (perhaps Latin-1) and ‘PC-8’ files. OpenOffice 3.x asks for the character set when opening the file.
There is an IETF RFC4180 ( https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4180 ) for CSV files, which mandates comma as the separator and CRLF line endings. write.csv writes compliant files on Windows: use eol = "\r\n" on other platforms.
write.table can be slow for data frames with large numbers (hundreds or more) of columns: this is inevitable as each column could be of a different class and so must be handled separately. If they are all of the same class, consider using a matrix instead.
The ‘R Data Import/Export’ manual.
read.table , write .
write.matrix in package MASS .
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Writing to a csv in r function
I am trying to write a function that writes an output to a csv file within that function. I am trying to direct the csv file to a folder labeled "test" within the working directory. When I run the function then use it, nothing happens.
This is the function:
This is how I used the function:
FshPelExcurSC <- SCTble(FshPelExcur,"FshPelExcurSC")
When I go back and try the code separately outside the function, it works and the csv file appears in the folder I specified. But for some reason when I call on the function, nothing happens. The function does create the table, it shows up in my global environment, it just doesn't appear as a csv in the folder I'd like it to.
I have many tables to make, and I'd like to name them by the second argument that the function calls for when writing them to csv files.
I haven't found anything that addresses this particular problem in the SO question and answers, and am at a bit of a loss.
- 2 You've got the write.csv after the return , so the function never gets to the write.csv . return exits a function. – Spacedman Jun 23, 2017 at 19:03
- Thanks, @Spacedman. I moved the return after the write.csv, but now I'm getting this error: Error in file(file, ifelse(append, "a", "w")) : invalid 'description' argument In addition: Warning message: In if (file == "") file <- stdout() else if (is.character(file)) { : the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used Called from: file(file, ifelse(append, "a", "w")) – Anthony Jun 23, 2017 at 19:29
- You've overwritten the passed-in datname with this line datname<-as.data.frame(y) , so your filename is being constructed by pasting the dataframe contents... – Spacedman Jun 23, 2017 at 20:18
- @Spacedman, thank you! I removed that line and it works perfectly now. – Anthony Jun 23, 2017 at 21:24
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Data to Fish
How to Export DataFrame to CSV in R
Here is a template that you may use to export a DataFrame to CSV in R:
And if you want to include the row.names, simply change it to TRUE .
In the next section, you’ll see an example with the steps to export your DataFrame.
Steps to Export a DataFrame to CSV in R
Let’s say that you have the following dataset:
The goal is to export that dataset to a CSV file. But before you do that, let’s capture that data in R in the form of a DataFrame.
Step 1: Create a DataFrame
To create a DataFrame in R , you may use this template:
Note that it’s not necessary to place quotes around numeric values.
For our example, you’ll get:
If you run the code in R, you’ll see the following DataFrame:
Step 2: Use write.csv to Export the DataFrame
Next, you’ll need to add the syntax to export the DataFrame to a CSV file in R.
To do that, simply use the template that you saw at the beginning of this guide:
You’ll need to include the path where you’d like to export the DataFrame on your computer.
For illustration purposes, the following path will be used when exporting the DataFrame (where the file name to be created is ‘People’):
C:\\Users\\Ron\\Desktop\\Test\\People.csv
So here is the code to export the DataFrame to CSV for our example:
Pay attention to several highlighted portions in the path name:
C:\\Users\\Ron\\Desktop\\Test\\ People .csv
- The blue portion represents the file name to be created. In our example, we used the file name of ‘ People ‘ but you may specify another file name if you wish
- The green portion reflects the file type of .csv . Don’t forget to add that portion when exporting CSV files
Also notice that a double backslash (‘\\’) was used within the path. By adding a double backslash, you would avoid the following error in R:
Error: ‘\U’ used without hex digits in character string starting “”C:\U”
Step 3: Run the code to Export the DataFrame to CSV
Finally, run the code in R (adjusted to your path), and a new CSV file will be created at your specified location.
The data within that file should match with the data in DataFrame created in R:
You just saw how to export a DataFrame to a CSV file in R. At times, you may face an opposite situation, where you’ll need to import a CSV file into R.
If that’s the case, you may want to visit the following guide that explains how to import a CSV file into R .
Finally, you may also want to check the Data Output documentation .
- Control Flow
- Errors Handling in R
- File Handling in R
- Packages in R
- Data Visualization
- Statistics in R
- Machine Learning in R
- Data Science in R
- Write an Interview Experience
- Share Your Campus Experience
- How to append a whole dataframe to a CSV in R ?
- Merge multiple CSV files using R
- How to Import a CSV File into R ?
- How to Read a CSV from URL into R?
- Reading the CSV file into Dataframes in R
- Export CSV File without Row Names in R
- How to write to CSV in R without index ?
- Append row to CSV using R
- Import and Merge Multiple CSV Files in R
- Import Only Selected Columns of Data from CSV in R
- How to calculate mean of a CSV file in R?
- Printing Output of an R Program
- Cumulative Frequency Graph in R
- R If Else Conditions
- R – Keywords
- Monte Carlo Simulation of Bernoulli Trials in R
- Implement Machine Learning With Caret In R
- How to Read xls files from R using gdata
- Apply a Function (or functions) across Multiple Columns using dplyr in R
- String Matching in R Programming
- Change column name of a given DataFrame in R
- Convert Factor to Numeric and Numeric to Factor in R Programming
- Adding elements in a vector in R programming - append() method
- Clear the Console and the Environment in R Studio
- How to Replace specific values in column in R DataFrame ?
- Comments in R
- Filter data by multiple conditions in R using Dplyr
- Creating a Data Frame from Vectors in R Programming
- Change Color of Bars in Barchart using ggplot2 in R
Writing to CSV files in R
For Data Analysis sometimes creating CSV data file is required and do some operations on it as per our requirement. So, In this article we are going to learn that how to write data to CSV File using R Programming Language.
To write to csv file write.csv() function is used.
Syntax: write.csv(data, path) Parameter: data: data to be added to csv path: pathname of the file
- Create a DataFrame
- Pass required values to the function
- Write to file
Let us first create a data frame.
Our Data in console
Now let us write this data to a csv file and save it to a required location.
CSV File with data
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Export CSV File without Row Names in R (Example)
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to export a CSV file without row names in R .
Table of contents:
Creation of Example Data
Example: write.csv without row names, video & further resources.
So without further additions, let’s just jump right in.
We will use the following data frame as example data in this tutorial:
We can export our example data as CSV with the write.csv function:

Table 1: Exported CSV-File with Row Names.
Table 1 shows the output of the write.csv function. A CSV-file with row names.
In case we want to export a CSV-file without row names from R to our directory, we can use row.names argument of the write.csv R function. We simply have to specify row.names = FALSE:

Table 2: Exported CSV-File without Row Names.
Note that this example has illustrated how to use the row.names argument within the write.csv function. However, the same specification could be applied within other functions such as write.table or write.xlsx of the xlsx package as well.
Table 2 shows our new CSV-file: It contains our data without row names.
I have recently published a video tutorial on my YouTube channel, which explains the R programming syntax of this article. You can find the video below:
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In addition, I can recommend reading the other RStudio articles of my website:
- The R Programming Language
In this article you learned how to prevent R from writing row names to an exported CSV-file in the R programming language. Let me know in the comments, in case you have further questions.
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I’m Joachim Schork. On this website, I provide statistics tutorials as well as code in Python and R programming.
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