library(tidyverse)

data_file <- 'http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning-databases/abalone/abalone.data'
abalone <- read_csv(file = data_file, col_names = FALSE)
names(abalone) <- c('sex', 'length', 'diameter', 'height', 'whole_weight', 'shucked_weight', 'viscera_weight', 'shell_weight', 'rings')
head(abalone)