[R] ReadLines question

[Roger Bivand]

On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, Jonathan Greenberg wrote:

> I'm getting the following error:
> 
> > headerinfo=readLines(met_station_file,n=8)
> > headerinfo
> [1] "Plot Title: tahoe met validation ,,,,,,,"
> [2]Error: invalid multibyte string
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> 
> met_station_file's first 8 lines are as follows:
> 
> Plot Title: tahoe met validation ,,,,,,,
> #,"Time, GMT-07:00","Temp, ƒF",Coupler Attached,Host Connected,Coupler
                             ^^^

or whatever this looks like to you (was ^Ã for me in LC_CTYPE=en_GB) is a 
multibyte string. Is there a mismatch between the encoding (see ?locales) 
of the file and the machine into which you are reading? 

> Detached,Stopped,End Of File
> 34,10/1/2005 0:00,49.937,,,,,
> 35,10/1/2005 0:30,47.266,,,,,
> 36,10/1/2005 1:00,47.446,,,,,
> 37,10/1/2005 1:30,47.982,,,,,
> 38,10/1/2005 2:00,48.517,,,,,
> 39,10/1/2005 2:30,49.228,,,,,
> 
> Why am I getting this error?  Are those quotation marks causing the hiccup?
> If so, how do I get around this programmatically?
> 
> --j
> 
> 

-- 
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