[Rd] [R] help with read.table() function

[Marc Schwartz]

Duncan,

OK. I mis-understood the proposal. My error.

Thanks for the clarification.

Marc

On Sun, 2006-01-29 at 13:08 -0500, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 1/29/2006 12:55 PM, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> > I would argue against this.
> > 
> > If this were the default, that is requiring user interaction, it would
> > break a fair amount of code that I (and I am sure a lot of others have)
> > where automation is critical.
> 
> I don't see how this change could affect any code that currently works 
> -- maybe you misunderstood the proposal?  I'm just suggesting that the 
> args to functions that take input from files use file.choose() as a 
> default.  For example, read.table's arg list would change from
> 
> function (file, header = FALSE, ...
> 
> to
> 
> function (file = file.choose(), header = FALSE, ...
> 
> Currently a call like read.table() dies with an error message:
> 
>  > read.table()
> Error in read.table() : argument "file" is missing, with no default
> 
> With this change we wouldn't get an error here.
> 
> > 
> > A lot of the issues seem to be user errors, file permission errors,
> > hidden extensions as is pointed out below and related issues. If there
> > is a legitimate bug in R resulting in these issues, then let's patch
> > that. However, I don't think that I can recall reproducible situations
> > where a bug in R is the root cause of these problems.
> 
> This isn't about fixing a bug, it's about making the user interface a 
> bit less error-prone.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
> 
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > 
> > Marc Schwartz
> > 
> > On Sun, 2006-01-29 at 12:18 -0500, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> >> (Moved from R-help).
> >>
> >> This comes up often enough that I'm starting to think most functions 
> >> that take filename arguments should have file.choose() as the default 
> >> value.  Then one could do
> >>
> >> read.table()
> >>
> >> and have a dialog box pop up in Windows, or some other prompt for a 
> >> filename in other platforms.  Are there any obviously bad side effects 
> >> from a change like this?
> >>
> >> Duncan Murdoch
> >>
> >> On 1/29/2006 11:51 AM, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> >>> Romain Francois <francoisromain at free.fr> writes:
> >>>
> >>>> Le 29.01.2006 16:26, oliver wee a écrit :
> >>>>
> >>>>> hello, I have just started using R for doing a project
> >>>>> in time series...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> unfortunately, I am having trouble using the
> >>>>> read.table function for use in reading my data set.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This is what I'm getting:
> >>>>> I inputted:
> >>>>> data <-
> >>>>> read.table("D:/Oliver/Professional/Studies/Time Series
> >>>>> Analysis/spdc2693.data", header = TRUE)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I got:
> >>>>> Error in file(file, "r") : unable to open connection
> >>>>> In addition: Warning message:
> >>>>> cannot open file 'D:/Oliver/Professional/Studies/Time
> >>>>> Series Analysis/spdc2693.data', reason 'No such file
> >>>>> or directory'
> >>>>>
> >>>>> as I am just a novice programmer, I really would
> >>>>> appreciate help from you guys. Is there a need to
> >>>>> setpath in R, like in java or something like that...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am using the windows version btw. 
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I have also tried to put the file in the work
> >>>>> directory of R, so that I only typed 
> >>>>> data <- read.table("spdc2693.data", header = TRUE)
> >>>>> Again, it won't work, with the same error message.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I would appreciate any help. thanks again.
> >>>>>  
> >>>>>
> >>>> Hi, try :
> >>>>
> >>>> read.table(file.choose(), header=TRUE)
> >>>>
> >>>> and go to your file.
> >>>> Also, you can look a ?setwd, ?getwd
> >>> Right. Or just file.choose() and see what the OS thinks your file is
> >>> really called. The most common causes for symptoms like that are
> >>>
> >>> (A) The file is "spcd2693.data"
> >>> (B) There's an extra extension which ever helpful Windows decided to
> >>> hide, as in "spdc2693.data.txt".
> >>>
> >>>
> >> ______________________________________________
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> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > 
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