[R] Re: read dbf files into R

Vikas Rawal vikas at mail.jnu.ac.in
Wed Sep 29 07:10:07 CEST 2004


Is there a linux-based/free command line tool for converting dbf files 
into txt? Conceptually, it is not a great way of doing things. We have a 
dbf file with a well defined structure. We convert it into a text file, 
which has a loose structure, undefined variables types etc. And then we 
read the text file. I should be much better to directly read a dbf file 
and use its database structure definition to ensure that data come into 
R correctly.

RODBC route does not seem suitable for my needs. I need to read some 300 
files, and combine all the data. Using ODBC would mean that I would have 
to set up 300 DSNs in the odbc.ini.

Or is there a way to set it up from the command line as well? I suppose 
it must be possible to write a script that will suitably modify odbc.ini 
file. But that sounds far too complicated.

I have been a user of SAS for a long time. This exercise would be done 
in a flash there. I wish there was a simple way of doing it in R.

Don't we have a simple command that will read a dbf file, or in fact, a 
set of commands that will read common file formats. I see that we can 
read SAS, STATA and SPSS files. Somebody would have thought of doing the 
same for dbf. Isn't it?

Vikas

Vikas



Vito Ricci wrote:

>Hi,
>
>read the manual: 
>R Data Import/Export
>http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-data.pdf
>
>Another way is to convert .dbf file in .txt and use
>read.table(), scan() an similar.
>
>Best
>Vito
>
>
>You wrote:
>
>I run R on redhat linux.
>What would be the easiest way to read dbf files into
>R?
>
>Vikas
>
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