[R] read.table

Uwe Ligges ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de
Sat Feb 26 14:24:34 CET 2005


Tilo Blenk wrote:
> Maybe argument 'fill' of read.table is the solution.
> 
> The default value is FALSE in read.table and, therefore, any line not 
> having the same number of fields as the first line (not skipped) will 
> make problems. If set to TRUE, as in read.delim and read.csv, lines with 
> less number of fields get blank fields added at the end.
> 
> If exporting tab delimited text files from Excel lines with empty fields 
> at the end in the Excel file often have less fields than the header line 
> in the text file. Reading them with read.delim fixes that.
> 
> If the problem is more complicated you probably need to find the lines 
> with count.fields and correct them manually.
> 
> You can find them (actually the line number) with something like
> 
> which(count.fields('data.txt') != count.fields('data.txt')[1])
> 
> assuming that the first line has the correct number of fields.
> 
> Tilo
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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



Tilo,

is this an answer to a R-help question?
If so, I'd like to suggest to cite the original post and reply also to 
the original poster who might not be a subscribed member of this list...

Uwe Ligges




More information about the R-help mailing list