Ignore text when reading data

x <- readLines(textConnection("main data file - file 1

closeAllConnections()
# remove blanks
x <- x[x != ""]
# get the lines with numbers
indx.num <- grep("^[-0-9]", x)
header <- x[indx.num[1] - 2]
input <- read.table(textConnection(x[indx.num]))
names(input) <- strsplit(header, "\\s+")[[1]]
input

Hi,
I have tab delimited text files containing numerical data,
like below, but many more columns.

As you can see, the first few lines are heading and file data.  I need to
skip these lines.  2 lines above where the numbers start is what I want to
use as my header rows.  I then want to ignore the next line (containing
units) and start importing data.

The header row repeats.  i want to ignore the blank rows and text in the
data and then continue reading.  Is there an easy way to do this?

thanks
Beyar


-------------------------
main data file - file 1
by mr x
etc


Time    out1
Sec     mm
0.82495117      -0.020977303
1.3554688       -0.059330709
1.826416        -0.021419302
2.3295898       -0.051521059
2.8347168       -0.020661414


Time    out1
Sec     mm
3.8679199       -0.000439643
4.3322754       -0.063477799
4.8015137       -0.024581354
5.3286133       -0.067487299
5.8212891       -0.011978489

-----------------------------------------------

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