[R] Newbie problem with read.table

[Roger Bivand]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Jan Conrad wrote:

> Hi R,
>  I have a seemingly simple problem. I have a table in following format
> (tab seperated)
> 
>    Njets NBjets	NElec	  NMuon   Meff	HT	  HT3j	HE	  Aplan
> Plan	       
> 1  4     3	 	2       0       366.278 253.642 87.7473   1385
> 0.0124566   0.376712       
> 2  3     1      	1       0       235.19  157.688 18.2852
> 574.253 0.00064187  0.00528814 
> 
> I read in with:
> 
> > ttbar<-read.table("test2.dat",header=TRUE)
> 
> 
> > ttbar
>   Njets NBjets NElec NMuon    Meff      HT    HT3j       HE      Aplan
> 1     4      3     2     0 366.278 253.642 87.7473 1385.000 0.01245660
> 2     3      1     1     0 235.190 157.688 18.2852  574.253 0.00064187
>         Plan
> 1 0.37671200
> 2 0.00528814,
> 
>  i.e.. the table is split after 9 variables. How come ?

> options("width")
$width
[1] 80

says what the width of your console is. Columns beyond this get wrapped 
gently (not each row by itself) - it can be set different values if you 
choose - try:

ow <- options("width")
options(width=40)
options("width")
ttbar
options(ow)
options("width")

So this is just the print function for data.frame objects doing its unsung
job. A very useful function for looking at things when they don't seem to
be what you think is str(), which concisely says what the structure of an
object is, so str(ttbar)  should tell you that it is a data frame of 10
variables and 2 observations.

> 
> Thanks,
> Jan
> 
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no