[R] Import fixed-format ascii file with mixed record types

[David Winsemius]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 2:33 PM, trece por ciento wrote:

> Thanks David, but can read.fwf cope with different record types?
> For example, if recordtype is the 4th character, I could have:
>
> 011125678 ---> This is record Type 1
> 011136779 ---> This is record Type 1
> 011124943 ---> This is record Type 1
> 011286711 ---> This is record Type 2
> 011234872 ---> This is record Type 2
> 011135628 ---> This is record Type 1
>
> So, how can I tell read.fwf to take the correct type into account?

You may need to separate the line-types first. If the numbers of lines  
are not too large then this would exemplify a strategy:

 > txt <- "011125678
+ 011136779
+ 011124943
+ 011286711
+ 011234872
+ 011135628"

 > substr(readLines(textConnection(txt)), 4,4)
[1] "1" "1" "1" "2" "2" "1"
 > file1 <- readLines(textConnection(txt)) 
[substr(readLines(textConnection(txt)), 4,4) == "1"]
 > file2 <- readLines(textConnection(txt)) 
[substr(readLines(textConnection(txt)), 4,4) == "2"]
 > file1
[1] "011125678" "011136779" "011124943" "011135628"
 > file2
[1] "011286711" "011234872"

Then these text objects could be processed with  
read.fwf(textConnection(file1) and the same for file2.

-- 
David.

> Thanks again,
> Hug
>
> --- On Mon, 2/1/10, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> From: David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [R] Import fixed-format ascii file with mixed record  
> types
> To: "trece por ciento" <el13porciento at yahoo.com>
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Date: Monday, February 1, 2010, 12:01 PM
>
>
> On Feb 1, 2010, at 11:40 AM, trece por ciento wrote:
>
>> I need to import several ascii files in fixed format with two  
>> different record types. The data comes from European Labor Force  
>> Surveys, wich is a household survey. The first record type is for  
>> people over 16 years, and the second much sorter is for people aged  
>> 15 or less (this record has a filler with several blanks to get the  
>> same record length).
>> The files tipically have 160000 records, with 176 characters per  
>> record, the data is numeric, corresponding to 102 variables, mostly  
>> integers (seven variables have two decimals). My opertating system  
>> is Windows XP.
>> My questions:
>> 1. Wich do you think is the best way to import the files into R?
>
>
> ?read.fwf
>
>> 2. Could you give me any references or examples?
>
> There are examples in the help page.
>
>> Thanking you in advance,
>> Hug
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> Heritage Laboratories
> West Hartford, CT
>
>
>
>
>

David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT