[R] Data separated by spaces, getting data into R using field lengths

[Lauri Nikkinen]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't have an access to this
database, I just got this messy file.

-L

2009/9/8 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>:
> On 9/8/2009 8:21 AM, Lauri Nikkinen wrote:
>>
>> This data is from database and the maximum length of a field is
>> defined. I mean that every column has a maximum length and I want to
>> use this maximum length as a separator. So if one "cell" in that
>> column is shorter than the maximum, "cell" should be padded with white
>> spaces or something like that. This seems to be hard to explain.
>
> Your problem is the intermediate file.  Why not get R to read directly from
> the database, using RODBC?
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>>
>> Regards,
>> L
>>
>> 2009/9/8 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>:
>>>
>>> On 9/8/2009 8:07 AM, Lauri Nikkinen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, I tried it but I got
>>>>
>>>>> varlength <- c(2, 2, 18, 5, 18)
>>>>> read.fwf("c:temppi.txt", widths=varlength)
>>>>
>>>>  V1 V2                 V3    V4   V5
>>>> 1 DF 12  This is an exampl e 1 T  his
>>>> 2 DF 12  This is an 1232 T his i    s
>>>> 3 DF 14  This is 12334 Thi s is   an
>>>> 4 DF 15  This 23 This is a n exa mple
>>>>
>>>> Which is not the way I want it.
>>>
>>> It looks as though that's because you don't have fixed width data.  "
>>> This
>>> is an example" is 19 chars, including the leading space.  You told R it
>>> was
>>> 18.  " This is an " is only 12 characters.
>>>
>>> I would say you have two fixed width fields, and three varying fields,
>>> with
>>> no delimiters.  If the middle one of the three always contains digits and
>>> the others don't, you can probably extract them using sub(), but you
>>> can't
>>> use any of the read.* functions to do this:  your format is too strange.
>>>
>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>
>>>>
>>>> structure(list(V1 = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L), .Label = "DF", class
>>>> = "factor"),
>>>>   V2 = c(12L, 12L, 14L, 15L), V3 = structure(c(4L, 3L, 2L,
>>>>   1L), .Label = c(" This 23 This is a", " This is 12334 Thi",
>>>>   " This is an 1232 T", " This is an exampl"), class = "factor"),
>>>>   V4 = structure(c(1L, 2L, 4L, 3L), .Label = c("e 1 T", "his i",
>>>>   "n exa", "s is "), class = "factor"), V5 = structure(c(2L,
>>>>   4L, 1L, 3L), .Label = c("an ", "his", "mple", "s"), class =
>>>> "factor")), .Names = c("V1",
>>>> "V2", "V3", "V4", "V5"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA,
>>>> -4L))
>>>>
>>>> Any ideas?
>>>> -L
>>>>
>>>> 2009/9/8 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9/8/2009 7:53 AM, Lauri Nikkinen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have a text file similar to this (separated by spaces):
>>>>>>
>>>>>> x <- "DF12 This is an example 1 This
>>>>>> DF12 This is an 1232 This is
>>>>>> DF14 This is 12334 This is an
>>>>>> DF15 This 23 This is an example
>>>>>> "
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and I know the field lengths of each variable (there is 5 variables in
>>>>>> this data set), which are:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> varlength <- c(2, 2, 18, 5, 18)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How can I import this kind of data into R, using the varlength
>>>>>> variable as an field separator indicator?
>>>>>
>>>>> See ?read.fwf.
>>>>>
>>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>