[R] Odp: Tables

[Petr PIKAL]

Hi

r-help-bounces at r-project.org napsal dne 26.03.2009 16:39:18:

> Hi,
> 
> I am just starting using R. Hence, sorry for asking probably rather easy 

> questions.
> 
> I used "read.table" to bring an .txt Table to R. Unfortunately the 
> columns do not have the same length. I tried "fill=TRUE", to fill the 
> blank space with "na". In a certain kind of way it worked, but befor 
> filling the spaces it moved data from later columns to the first:
> 
> 1    a   b   c                  1   a   b   c
> 2   a   b      c                  2   a   b   c 
> 3   a   b      c                   3   a   b    c 
> 4      b      c                     4   b   c    NA
> 5            c                       5   c   NA NA

How do you know that c is in third column? If you can expect fixed width 
fields try

read.fwf

but if there is nothing what separates fields and they have variable 
length it would be quite difficult. Maybe to read each line and then to 
use some regexpr function no properly divide each line into appropriate 
columns.

But maybe somebody will come with better idea.

Regards
Petr




> 
> What is my mistake?
> 
> Thank you
> Sebastian
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
***************************************************************************************************************
> 
> Dipl. Biol. Sebastian Krug
> PhD - student
> IFM - GEOMAR
> Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences
> Research Division 2 - Marine Biogeochemistry
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> D - 24105 Kiel
> Germany
> 
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