[R] Easy cut & paste from Excel to R?
Ken Knoblauch
knoblauch at lyon.inserm.fr
Fri Feb 18 17:44:26 CET 2005
In fact, I noticed today that when I copied from an Excell spreadsheet,
rather than just putting some text in a file, that it worked as you
say.
I also downloaded xclip and compiled it, which works just fine
on the Mac, and this mechanisms seems to work the same way as
pbpaste, in terms of generating or not warnings under the same
circumstances. xclip has slightly different options than pbpaste
(e.g., you can access 3 different pasteboards) and it would seem to cover
the X11 situation. So, it represents a solution that is
slightly more general, as applying to both Mac and linux.
Quoting Don MacQueen <macq at llnl.gov>:
> I tried Ken's suggestion
> read.table(pipe("pbpaste"),header=TRUE)
> on my Mac OS X system and it worked *without* generating any warning
> message.
>
> If my experience represents the norm, and Ken's is the exception, it
> is so simple that no further contribution to R is needed, I would
> say. Thank you, Ken.
>
> The method can also be to go the other way, using pbcopy instead of
> pbpaste.
> Emulating an example found in R's help under ?'pipe':
>
> > test <- data.frame(a=1:3,b=letters[1:3])
> > zz <- pipe('pbcopy','w')
> > write.table(test,file=zz,sep='\t',row.names=FALSE)
> > close(zz)
>
> Then in Excel (or any other Mac-native application) use the Paste command.
>
>
> In the past I would get the warning message that Ken reports when I
> used read.delim() on tab-delimited files
> created using Excel's "Save as tab delimited" option. Excel does not
> put a newline at the
> end of the last line, and as a result R would generate that error
> message. Excel still does not.
> However, R now reads such files correctly, without generating the
> warning message.
>
> pbpaste and pbcopy are included in the OS as distributed by Apple
>
> [163]% which pbpaste
> /usr/bin/pbpaste
>
> (though perhaps only if one of the optional developer-related
> packages has been installed)
> so these methods should be available to all Mac users of R, without
> any extra work on their part
> (other than learning about them, that is).
>
> By the way, there doesn't appear to be open connection left behind:
>
> > bah <- read.table(pipe('pbpaste'),header=TRUE)
> > dim(bah)
> [1] 21 5
> > showConnections(all=TRUE)
> description class mode text isopen can read can write
> 0 "stdin" "terminal" "r" "text" "opened" "yes" "no"
> 1 "stdout" "terminal" "w" "text" "opened" "no" "yes"
> 2 "stderr" "terminal" "w" "text" "opened" "no" "yes"
>
>
> > version
> _
> platform powerpc-apple-darwin6.8.5
> arch powerpc
> os darwin6.8.5
> system powerpc, darwin6.8.5
> status
> major 2
> minor 0.1
> year 2004
> month 11
> day 15
> language R
>
> Mac OS 10.3.8
>
> Excel 2004, version 11.1 (040909)
>
> -Don
>
> At 11:09 PM +0100 2/17/05, Ken Knoblauch wrote:
> >Here is something quick & dirty for Mac that may be serviceable in
> >some cases, while awaiting someone with greater understanding of
> >programming connections than I have currently.
> >
> >With the following copied to the clipboard from Excell:
> >H T Q F
> >1 2 3.3 a
> >3 5 10.2 b
> >5 9 11 A
> >
> >I tried in R:
> >
> >read.table(pipe("pbpaste"),header=TRUE)
> > H T Q F
> >1 1 2 3.3 a
> >2 3 5 10.2 b
> >3 5 9 11.0 A
> >Warning message:
> >incomplete final line found by readTableHeader on `pbpaste'
> >> str(read.table(pipe("pbpaste"),header=TRUE))
> >`data.frame': 3 obs. of 4 variables:
> > $ H: int 1 3 5
> > $ T: int 2 5 9
> > $ Q: num 3.3 10.2 11
> > $ F: Factor w/ 3 levels "A","a","b": 2 3 1
> >Warning message:
> >incomplete final line found by readTableHeader on `pbpaste'
> >
> >I haven't been able to track down readTableHeader yet. The warning
> >occurs even without headers in the data.
> >
> >
> >Quoting Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>:
> >
> >> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> >>
> >> > Ken Knoblauch wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> I tried the interesting suggestion below, discussed in several
> postings
> >> >> yesterday on the help-list, on my Mac (0S 10.3.7) but could not get
> it
> >> to
> >> >> work, as shown in the tests indicated below.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>>> read.table(file("clipboard"), sep="\t", dec=",")
> >> >
> >> > Connections to the clipboard are only available on Windows.
> >>
> >> Ken is of course welcome to contribute them for MacOS X (or indeed for
> >> X11).
> >> People do take for granted the work the developers do to provide such
> >> things ....
> >>
> >> --
> >> 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 272866 (PA)
> >> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >____________________
> >Ken Knoblauch
> >Inserm U 371
> >Cerveau et Vision
> >18 avenue du Doyen Lepine
> >69675 Bron cedex
> >France
> >tel: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 77
> >fax: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 61
> >portable: 06 84 10 64 10
> >
> >______________________________________________
> >R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------
> Don MacQueen
> Environmental Protection Department
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> Livermore, CA, USA
> --------------------------------------
>
____________________
Ken Knoblauch
Inserm U 371
Cerveau et Vision
18 avenue du Doyen Lepine
69675 Bron cedex
France
tel: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 77
fax: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 61
portable: 06 84 10 64 10
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