[R] read.fwf and header

[davidr at rhotrading.com]

"Archaic" it may be, but I still have to deal with fixed format data
files on a daily basis.

David L. Reiner
Rho Trading Securities, LLC
Chicago  IL  60605
312-362-4963

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Martin Maechler
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 1:52 AM
To: gregor.gorjanc at bfro.uni-lj.si
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] read.fwf and header

<snip>

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.

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

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