[R] Reading fixed column format

[Jason Barnhart]

Another possibility:

    1) Split the original file into smaller chunks of xx,xxx of rows.
    2) Process each file using read.fwf saving the requisite variables.
       (If necessary, save each intermediate matrix/data.frame to disk
       to conserve space)
    3) 'rbind' the results.

Not exactly elegant but it works.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gabor Grothendieck" <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
To: "Anupam Tyagi" <AnupTyagi at yahoo.com>
Cc: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:21 AM
Subject: Re: [R] Reading fixed column format


> On 9/13/06, Anupam Tyagi <AnupTyagi at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > C:\bin>cut -c2-3,6-8 a.dat
>> > 23678
>> > 23678
>> > 23678
>>
>> Thanks. I think this will work. How do I redirect the output to a file on
>> windows?
>
> Same as on UNIX
>
> cut -c2-3,6-8 a.dat > a2.dat
>
>> Is there simple way to convert the cut command to a script on windows,
>
> Using notepad or other text editor put it in file a.bat and then
> issue this command from the console
>
> a.bat
>
> Note that you could process it multiple time if you like:
>
> cut -c6-8 a.dat > a2.dat
> cut -c2-3 a2.dat > a3.dat
>
> produces the same thing but uses 2 passes and so keeps each line shorter.
> Be sure you do it from the tail end forward as shown above to avoid having
> to recalculate the positions.
>
>> because the entire command may not fit on one line? Anupam.
>>
>
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