[R] read.table( ... comment.char="#") truncated my data

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 Ren_Yu at hgsi.com wrote:

> Thanks a lot! That works. This will solve my problem. Otherwise I need to
> update lots of R functions we have developed based on R1.3.1.
>
>
>
>
> Ben Bolker <ben at zoo.ufl.edu>
> 10/11/2002 04:49 PM
> Please respond to bolker
>
>
>         To:     Ren_Yu at hgsi.com
>         cc:     r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
>         Subject:        Re: [R] read.table( ... comment.char="#") truncated my data
>
>
>
>  I would guess the answer is yes (although I'm not in R-Core), but in the
> meanwhile you can easily override the definition with your own by putting
> something like

Well, no, you can't in R>=1.6.0.  Sometimes the definition in base will be
used, depending if namespaces are involved.

> old.read.table <- read.table
> read.table <- function(...) {
>    old.read.table(...,comment.char="")
> }
>
> in your .Rprofile or .First function, which will work
> as long as you never use the comment.char argument explicitly
> with your new version of read.table ...
>
> (warning: I haven't tested this)

A better version (following read.csv as I hinted previously)

old.read,table <- function(..., comment.char="")
   read.table(..., comment.char=comment.char)

and use old.read.table explicitly.

>
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 Ren_Yu at hgsi.com wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I found that the new feature of the comment.char="#"  argument in the
> > read.table function truncated my data while the data set actually
> contains
> >  '#'. We analyze lot of data that contain '#'. This is really annoying
> and
> > it is also not compatible earlier version of R. I searched the R archive
>
> > and found the following message for the scan function. Is it possible to
>
> > change the default to " " in read.table ?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ren
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Steve Cassidy wrote:
> > > I've just discovered the recent addition of the comment.char arg to
> > scan, a
> > > useful feature no doubt but the default value of # rather than ""
> breaks
> > my
> > > code which looks for # as a delimeter in a file and provides a messy
> > > incompatability with earlier versions of R and with Splus.
> > >
> > > Is there any chance that this default could be changed to ""?
> > It already has been. The NEWS for R-patched / R-devel says:
> >     o The default has been changed to scan(comment.char="") for
> >         consistency with earlier code (as in the previous item).
> >
>
> --
> 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
> Gainesville, FL 32611-8525                   (fax) 352-392-3704
>
>
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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