[R] unexpected results

[Marc Schwartz]

On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 04:36 -0700, nathan wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I'm just learning R and am encountering some unexpected results following a
> guide on the internet. If anyone can help that would be great - I think it
> is something about the way the data has been read in!
> 
> I've read a coma delimited text data file that was saved from excel:
> 
> > jacs.data <- read.table("/Users/natha/Desktop/JACSdata2.txt", header=TRUE,
> > sep=",")
> 
> This seemed to work fine, but then I start to get unusual results that don't
> seem right:
> 
> The guide says that names(file.data) will give output like "ID" "JURIS"
> "RESCODE" , but I get ID.JURIS.RESCODE.
> 
> The guide says that file.data[5,1] will give me the data for the 5th subject
> but i get: 
> [1] 7\tACT\t\t\tSUMMONS\tACTCC321.001\tA.C.T. - MINOR THEFT (REPLACEMENT
> VALUE $2000 OR LESS)\ etc - which seems scrambled
> 
> The guide says that file.data[var5>0] will give me the data for all subject
> who meet that condition (ie greater than 0 on var5), but I get:
> 
> Error in "[.data.frame"(jacs.data, offend > 0) : 
> 	object "offend" not found
> 
> can anyone help? Thanks nathan

It would appear that your data file is NOT comma delimited, but TAB
delimited.

The "\t" characters in the output above support this, since you asked
for just the first column for the 5th subject and it appears that you
got the entire row.

Re-run the import using:

jacs.data <- read.table("/Users/natha/Desktop/JACSdata2.txt",
                        header=TRUE, sep = "\t")

so that you are indicating that the delimiter is a TAB character, not a
comma.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz