[R] Problem with read.table()

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I have encountered a strange problem with read.table().

Most `strange problems' are user error, so please try not to blame your 
tools.

> When I try to
> read a tab delimited file I get an error message for line 260 not being
> equal to 14 (see below).

Yes, but not line 260 in that file, but line 260 as read by scan().

Think about quotes ... it works for me with quote="", and the quote on ca 
line 150 is causing you to get some very large fields with embedded new 
lines and tabs.

BTW, there is a 'R Data Import/Export' manual which goes through 
step-by-step the assumptions you make when using read.table with various 
options.  Do read it now.


> Using count.fields() suggests that a number of lines have length not
> equal to 14, but not 260.
>
> Looking at the actual file, however, I cannot see anything wrong with
> any lines. They all seem to have length 14, there are no double tabs
> etc., and the file reads correctly in other programs. Does anyone have
> any suggestions as to what this might stem from?
>
> I have placed a copy of the file at
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/~kgledits/archigos_v.1.9.asc
>
> regards,
> Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
>
>
> > archigos1.9 <- read.table("c:/work/work12/archigos/archigos_v.1.9.asc",
> +     sep="\t",header=T,as.is=T,row.names=NULL)
> Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec =
> dec,  :
>         line 260 did not have 14 elements
> > a <- count.fields("c:/work/work12/archigos/archigos_v.1.9.asc",sep="\t")
> > a <- data.frame(c(1:length(a)),a)
> > a[a[,2]!=14,]
>      c.1.length.a..  a
> 150             150 10
> 313             313 10
> 424             424 10
> 1189           1189  5
> 1510           1510 10
> 1514           1514 10
> 1590           1590  5
> 1600           1600 10
> 1612           1612 10
> 1618           1618 10
> 1619           1619 10
> 1709           1709 10
> 1722           1722 10
> 1981           1981 10
> 1985           1985 10
> 2112           2112 10
> 2178           2178 10
> 2208           2208 10
> 2224           2224 10
> 2530           2530  5
> 2536           2536  5
> 2573           2573  5
> 2928           2928  5
> -- 
> Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
> Department of Political Science, UCSD
> (On leave, University of Essex, 2005-6)
> Tel: +44 1206 872499, Fax: +44 1206 873234
> Email: kgleditsch at ucsd.edu or ksg at essex.ac.uk
> http://weber.ucsd.edu/~kgledits/
>
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>

-- 
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