[R] read.fwf and header

[Gregor Gorjanc]

Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> "Gregor" == Gregor Gorjanc <gregor.gorjanc at bfro.uni-lj.si>
>>>>>>     on Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:33:21 +0100 writes:
> 
>     Gregor> Daniel Nordlund wrote:
>     >> Gregor,
>     >> 
>     >> According to the help for read.fwf, sep needs to be set
>     >> to a value that occurs only in the header record.  I
>     >> changed the spaces to commas in the header record of your
>     >> example and used the following syntax and was able to
>     >> read the file just fine.
>     >> 
>     >> new.data<-read.fwf(file="test.txt", widths=c(3, 4, 10, 3,
>     >> 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 19), header=TRUE, sep=',')
>     >> 
>     >> Hope this is helpful,
>     >> 
>     >> Dan
> 
>     Gregor> Thanks Dan! But I have to modfy file first. Not that
>     Gregor> much of work but still.
> 
> Yes, but I think it shows read.fwf() should not be extended for
> even more special cases:
> 
> In my (and probably R-core's) view, read.fwf() should only have
> to be used for ``legacy data files'' (those times when people used *no*
> separators in order to save disk space), since nowadays, such
> data files should "automatically" have correct separators. 
> 
> --> Fix the "file producing process" rather than make read.fwf()
> unnecessarily more complicated.

Thank you for this explanation of your (and probably R-core's) view! I
really appreciate such feedback. I do agree that read.fwf is a bit
archaic way to import data, but sometimes you can not fix "file
producing process".

Perhaps above explanation and code examples from this thread could be
added to read.fwf help page. I can provide a patch if my proposal is sane.

Regards, Gregor