[R] RE:

[Guido Masarotto]

On Tue, Nov 09, 1999 at 04:34:33PM +0100, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
> Martyn Plummer <plummer at iarc.fr> writes:
> 
> > I usually do this by saving the spreadsheet in comma-separated variable
> > (csv) format, and then read it into R with this command
> > 
> > foo.dat <- read.table("foo.csv", header=TRUE, sep=",")
> 
> ...which reminds me that my students keep complaining that Excel does
> CSV files with comma as decimal point and semicolon as separators if
> Windows is localised to Danish (and I suppose also German). At least
> it is better than some other programs that would use comma for both
> items(!) but I suppose we need to cater for that kind of format along
> with the other CSV specialities. (BTW is there any way of
> distinguishing between 2 integer columns with comma as separator and 1
> column of decimal numbers with comma as decimal point??)


  Same in Italy.
  However, Peter, problem is that, if I remember well, you teach
  medical students. Some times ago, a group of students in Statistics
  here didn't complain and ended up with the following wrapper
  for read.table. Maybe not efficient and without any error
  checking but handy.

  guido

> read.comma.is.point
function(...,type=rep("n",n.var),no.quote=TRUE) {
  a <- read.table(...)
  names <- colnames(a)
  n.var <- length(names)
  for (i in 1:n.var)
    if (type[i]=="n") { 
      a[,i] <- as.numeric(gsub(",",".",as.character(a[,i])))
    } else {
      if (no.quote) 
        a[,i] <- gsub("^ *\"","",gsub("\" *$","",as.character(a[,i])))
    }
  names <- gsub("^ *\"","",names)
  names <- gsub("\" *$","",names)          
  colnames(a) <- names
  a
}
> system("cat Rachmaninoff");cat("\n")
"FirstVar";"SecondVar";"ThirdVar"
1,2; "one" ; 1,4
2,3 ; "two"; 2
> read.table("Rachmaninoff",header=T,sep=";")->a
> a
 \"FirstVar\"\"SecondVar\"\"ThirdVar\"
1        1,2    \"one\"         1,4
2       2,3      \"two\"          2
> attach(a)
> FirstVar
Error: Object "FirstVar" not found
> sum(a[,1])
Error in Summary.factor(..., na.rm = na.rm) : "sum" not meaningful for factors
> detach(a)
> read.comma.is.point("Rachmaninoff",header=T,sep=";",type=c("n","c","n"))->a
> a
  FirstVar SecondVar ThirdVar
1      1.2       one      1.4
2      2.3       two      2.0
> attach(a)
> FirstVar
[1] 1.2 2.3
> sum(FirstVar)
[1] 3.5
>   
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