readTargets              package:limma              R Documentation

_R_e_a_d _T_a_r_g_e_t_s _F_i_l_e

_D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n:

     Read targets file for a microarray experiment into a dataframe.

_U_s_a_g_e:

     readTargets(file="Targets.txt", path=NULL, sep="\t", row.names=NULL, quote="\"",...)

_A_r_g_u_m_e_n_t_s:

    file: character string giving the name of the targets file.

    path: character string giving the directory containing the file.
          Can be omitted if the file is in the current working
          irectory.

     sep: field separator character

row.names: character string giving the name of a column from which to
          obtain row names

   quote: the set of quoting characters

     ...: other arguments are passed to 'read.table'

_D_e_t_a_i_l_s:

     The targets file is a text file containing information about the
     RNA samples used as targets in the microarray experiment. Rows
     correspond to arrays and columns to covariates associated with the
     targets. For a two-color experiment, the targets file will
     normally include columns labelled 'Cy3' and 'Cy5' or similar
     specifying which RNA samples are hybridized to each channel of
     each array. Other columns may contain any other covariate
     information associated with the arrays or targets used in the
     experiment.

     If 'row.names' is non-null and there is a column by that name with
     unique values, then those values will be used as row names for the
     dataframe. If 'row.names' is null, then the column 'Labels' will
     be used if such exists or, failing that, the column 'FileName'.

     See the Limma User's Guide for examples of this function.

_V_a_l_u_e:

     A dataframe. Character columns are not converted into factors.

_A_u_t_h_o_r(_s):

     Gordon Smyth

_S_e_e _A_l_s_o:

     An overview of LIMMA functions for reading data is given in
     03.ReadingData.