[R] Working around 256 byte variable names? + trouble opening large file

[John Kane]

Well the first suspicious thing seems to be  the 256 byte variable names.  Do you really have a 256 byte variable name? If so, why?  It sounds like R is reading the entire header line as one variable.

Why not try exporting the Exce file as a csv file and loading that?  




--- On Mon, 9/21/09, A Singh <Aditi.Singh at bristol.ac.uk> wrote:

> From: A Singh <Aditi.Singh at bristol.ac.uk>
> Subject: [R] Working around 256 byte variable names? + trouble opening large file
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Received: Monday, September 21, 2009, 4:04 PM
> Dear R users,
> 
> I am trying to read in a file with 105 columns, and when
> trying to attach it, get an error as follows:
> 
> > vc1<-read.table("P:\\R\\Everything-I.txt",
> header=T, sep=" ", dec=".", 
> na.strings=NA, strip.white=T)
> > attach(vc1)
> Error in attach(vc1) : variable names are limited to 256
> bytes
> 
> Is there a way to get around this, and make R accept the
> given variable names? Or will I have to shorten them?
> 
> 
> Also, when I try to read in a much larger file with 430
> columns, I get the error:
> 
> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip,
> nlines, na.strings, :
>  line 397 did not have 431 elements
> 
> Is it that R isn't dealing too well with
> Excel-converted-to-text files? Is it a function of file
> size?
> 
> I have double-checked the 430 column file and all data
> seems to be in place.
> 
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> 
> Aditi
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------
> A Singh
> Aditi.Singh at bristol.ac.uk
> School of Biological Sciences
> University of Bristol
> 
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