Scan and Lists

This may be a newbie question - although I did search for this error
message in the archives and via google and didn't see this error:

The help page for "scan" indicates that among the types of data
capable of being read are:

"The supported types are 'logical', 'integer', 'numeric', 'complex', 'character', 'raw' and 'list': 
'list' values should have elements which are one of the first six types listed or 'NULL'.

I have tried to use a list within a "what" list : 

f <- scan(file="c:/test/testout.csv",what=list(hi=0.0,bye="",wave=list(1:1000)),sep=",",skip=1)

and the following error is returned: 

 "c:/test/testout.csv", what = list(hi = 0, bye = "",  : 
        unimplemented type 'list' in 'extractItem'

So, is my syntax confusing R, or is the documentation wrong, or is it
some other, third, option?

Thanks

M

Michael Lefsky
College of Natural Resources
Colorado State University
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