[R] Query: how to add quotes when importing a txt file

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Just to follow up based on offline discussion the problem is that
column one values
were being interpreted as numeric (since they are all numbers) so that,
for example, 09122007 was interpreted as 9122007 without the leading
zero.  In such a case the day was regarded as 91 which, of course, can't be.

The first column can be forced to be character like this:

read.zoo("myfile.txt", format = "%d%m%Y", colClasses = c(V1 = "character"))

Its possible that some additional smarts by read.zoo could handle
this automatically but for now the above will do it and I've added additional
warnings to ?read.zoo (in addition to a prior example already there which also
made reference to the numeric/character problem but might have been less
obvious).

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Gabor Grothendieck
<ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Stefano Sofia
> <stefano.sofia at regione.marche.it> wrote:
>>
>> Dear R users,
>> I have a txt file of the form
>>
>> 10092007 24.62 24.31 24.90
>> 11092007 19.20 23.17 22.10
>> 13092007 24.71 27.33 23.10
>> 14092007 27.33 27.90 24.10
>> 15092007 28.22 28.55 24.30
>> 16092007 28.53 29.24 27.40
>> 17092007 24.19 30.64 26.80
>> 18092007 22.60 20.62 28.40
>> 19092007  8.89  1.70 14.70
>> 20092007 21.27  2.92 17.30
>> 21092007 22.38 24.72  8.80
>> 22092007 23.94 24.73 20.40
>> 23092007 25.33 25.12 22.60
>> 24092007 24.91 22.46 21.40
>> 25092007 23.52 25.00 21.70
>> 26092007  2.50  2.29  8.80
>>
>> and I have to import it into R. The problem is that I have to add the quotes at the beginning and end of the file
>
> That is not correct.  The file is fine the way it is.  Read it in
> using read.zoo.  See ?read.zoo and read the
> three vignettes that come with zoo.
>