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

[David Winsemius]

On Sep 8, 2009, at 12:00 PM, Lauri Nikkinen wrote:

> Ok, I think that I have to give up and try to get this data separated
> by some char. It seem pretty much impossible to separate those fields.
> Thanks for your help and efforts.

The solution that Henrique offered seems to be a complete one:

read.table(textConnection(gsub("([0-9]+)", ";\\1;", "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
+ ")), sep = ";")
   V1 V2                   V3    V4                  V5
1 DF 12  This is an example      1                This
2 DF 12          This is an   1232             This is
3 DF 14             This is  12334         This is an
4 DF 15                This     23  This is an example

Verus what you wanted...
 > 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", "This is", "This is an", "This is an  
example"
+    ), class = "factor"), V4 = c(1L, 1232L, 12334L, 23L), V5 =
+ structure(1:4, .Label = c("This",
+    "This is", "This is an", "This is an example"), class =
+ "factor")), .Names = c("V1",
+ "V2", "V3", "V4", "V5"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA,
+ -4L))
   V1 V2                 V3    V4                 V5
1 DF 12 This is an example     1               This
2 DF 12         This is an  1232            This is
3 DF 14            This is 12334         This is an
4 DF 15               This    23 This is an example

Unless you can be any clearer ... than you have been to this hour.

>
> -L
>
> 2009/9/8 Lauri Nikkinen <lauri.nikkinen at iki.fi>:
>> This is the file (see the attachment) that represents the problem I'm
>> facing with the original file. I'm looking for some generic way to
>> solve this problem. Thank you for your time.
>>
>> -L
>>
>> 2009/9/8 Barry Rowlingson <b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk>:
>>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Lauri  
>>> Nikkinen<lauri.nikkinen at iki.fi> wrote:
>>>
>>>> But this is not the solution I was looking for. Thanks.
>>>
>>>  I think the only way you'll get the solution you are looking for is
>>> if you can let us have a copy of the original input file, or at  
>>> least
>>> the first few lines - and not pasted into an email because special
>>> characters like spaces and tabs get smushed up and confuse things.
>>>
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT