R Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument (read.table & csv)

This post illustrates how to deal with the “Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument” in R programming.

The article contains this information:

It’s time to dive into the tutorial…

Example 1: Reproduce the Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument

The following syntax shows how to reproduce the “Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument” in R.

Let’s assume that we want to import a CSV file from our computer to R. Then we might try to use the following R syntax:

read.csv2(paste0(1:2, ".csv"))                # Trying to insert multiple file names
# Error in file(file, "rt") : invalid 'description' argument

Unfortunately, the previous R code returns the “Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument” to the RStudio console.

The reason for this is that we have tried to insert multiple file names or paths at the same time (i.e. by using 1:2 within the paste0 function).

The read.csv (or read.table) function does only take one file path at the same time as input.

So how can we solve this problem? That’s what I’m going to show you next.

Example 2: Reproduce the Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument

The following R programming code illustrates how to fix the “Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument”.

For this, we simply have to insert only a single file path to the read.csv function:

read.csv2(paste0("only_one_name", ".csv"))    # Using only one file name

The previous R code works fine.

Video & Further Resources

Have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I’m showing the R programming codes of the present page:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

Furthermore, you could have a look at some of the related articles on this homepage. I have released several posts about error messages in R already:

• How to Fix in R: Error in file(file, “rt”) : cannot open the connection
• Handling Warning & Error Messages in R
• Introduction to R

In this tutorial you have learned how to debug the “Error in file(file, “rt”) : invalid ‘description’ argument” in the R programming language. Let me know in the comments, if you have additional questions. Besides that, don’t forget to subscribe to my email newsletter in order to get regular updates on the newest articles.