[R] error in read.table on Mac OS 10 ... request for help

Ben Bolker ben at zoo.ufl.edu
Tue Feb 19 15:28:37 CET 2002


  I haven't seen any answers to this, so I'll try to provide some other
things to try (although I don't really know what's going on).

  Try getwd() to see how paths appear to be specified internally.  You
could also try setwd("/Users/Shared/rm140_FULL/work") before
read.table("...").  Also try list.files() to check out the file names.

  It does seem you've been pretty thorough.

  good luck,
   Ben Bolker

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Jason Boyd wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm a new user of R, and unsure of why I'm getting an
> error reading external files on my Mac OS 10 machine.
> I've read through posts that would seem related (and 'R
> Import/Export' and 'Introduction to R' as well as
> pertinent sections in V&R's 'Modern Applied Statistics
> with S-Plus') but to no avail.    If anyone has any
> suggestions, I'd be very grateful.  Here's the problem:
>
> When I enter the command:
>
> > idusc <- read.table(file = "/Users/Shared/
> rm140_FULL/work/ioddupb.txt")
>
> I get the message:
>
> Error in file(file, "r") : cannot open file `/Users/Shared/
> rm140_FULL/work/ioddupb.txt'
>
> This is the correct path according to my Finder
> window's "path" tab (that is, as far as Users is a folder
> under /) and also according to the command line
> interface (shell).  I'm not sure why it can't read the file.
> I'm new to Unix systems also, so perhaps I've
> misunderstood paths (though I've been reading over
> Unix tutorials enough not to scare me). Other info:
>
> 1.  the file was created in simple text mode in Mac
> TextEdit and saved fixed width text format.
>
> 2.  when I save the file to another working directory
> under a different user, I also cannot read.table
>
> 3.  I checked the priveleges of the .txt file, they were
> Read & write for the owner and Read for everyone else
> so that would seem to take care of R being able to copy
> it.
>
> 4.  I also tried read.fwf with the same type error
> message.
>
> 5.  The tutorials and examples as well as libraries all
> work fine, I can read data in the libraries, use add-on
> functions, and plot so it doesn't seem to be a problem
> with R itself.
>
> I'm sure this is just a simple matter but I'm perplexed.
> Thanks for any suggestions,
>
> Jason Boyd
>
> graduate student
> University of Georgia
> College of Pharmacy
> boydj at mail.rx.uga.edu
>
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-- 
318 Carr Hall                                bolker at zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida    http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
Box 118525                                   (ph)  352-392-5697
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