[R] preprocessing data

[Jean Eid]

Thank you, that is exactly what I was looking for.

Just a minor suggestion to the manual Import/Export. maybe a reference to
the paper right underneath the line below would be helpfull for people
like me that have never used perl and would like to take the suggestion to
preprosses the data


Jean

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:

> Some time ago, Doug Bates wrote a useful paper called "Data
> manipulatation in perl."  It is a very concise intoduction and
> introduces the unpack function which is one way to deal with fixed
> format data.  Just google for
>
>    "data manipulation in perl" bates
>
> and you should be able to find a copy.
>
> Jean Eid wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > My question is concerning the line
> > "This is adequate for small files, but for anything more complicated we
> > recommend using the facilities   of a language like perl to pre-process
> > the file."
> >
> > in the import/export manual.
> >
> > I have a large fixed-width file that I would like to preprocess in Perl or
> > awk. The problem is that I do not know where to start. Does anyone have a
> > simple example on how to turn a fixed-width file in any of these
> > facilities into csv or tab delimited file. I guess I am looking for
> > somewhat a perl for dummies or awk for dummies that does this. any
> > pointers for website will be greatly appreciated
> >
> > Thank you
> >
> >
> > Jean Eid
> >
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>
>
> --
> Kevin E. Thorpe
> Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program
> Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
> Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
> email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.946.8081  Fax: 416.971.2462
>