[R] R-Help

[Douglas Bates]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 2:46 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 6, 2010, at 3:29 PM, Ravi Ramaswamy wrote:
>
>> Hi - I am not familiar with R.  Could I ask you a quick question?
>>
>> When I read a file like this, I get an error.  Not sure what I am doing
>> wrong.  I use a MAC.  How do I specify a full path name for a file in R?
>>  Or
>> do files have to reside locally?
>>
>>> KoreaAuto <- read.table(""/Users/

Especially when just starting using R the simplest approach is

KoreaAuto <- read.table(file.choose())

which brings up a file chooser panel so you can point and click your
way to the desired file.  If the file is tab-delimited, as appears to
be the case in the file you enclosed, you may want to use read.delim
instead of read.table.  The read.delim function sets up the defaults
for the many optional arguments to read.table specifically for
tab-delimited files with a header line of column names as you have
shown.

> I think the opening and clsing quotes meant that you supplied an empty
> string to the file argument.
>
>> raviramaswamy/Documents/Rutgers/STT 586/HW1 Data.txt"")
>> Error: unexpected numeric constant in "KoreaAuto <-
>> read.table(""/Users/raviramaswamy/Documents/Rutgers/STT 586"
>>>
>>
>
> Using single instances of either sort of quote ( " or ' ) on the ends of
> strings should work. If you drag a file from a Finder window to the
> R-console you should get a fully specified file path and name.
>
>> Seems like the working directory is
>>>
>>> getwd()
>>
>> [1] "/Users/raviramaswamy"
>
>> rd <- read.table(file="/Users/davidwinsemius/Downloads/meminfo.csv",
>> sep=",", header=TRUE)
>> rd
>     time      RSS      VSZ  MEM
> 1       1  3027932  3141808  4.5
> 2       2  3028572  3141808  4.5
> 3       3  3030208  3141808  4.5
> 4       4  3033332  3150004  4.5
> 5       5  3035036  3150004  4.5
>
> You can also shorten the Users/<username> part to "~"
>> rd <- read.table(file="~/Downloads/meminfo.csv", sep=",", header=TRUE)
>
>
>>>
>>
>> so I said this and still got an error
>>
>>> KoreaAuto <- read.table(/Documents/Rutgers/HW1Data)
>>
>> Error: unexpected '/' in "KoreaAuto <- read.table(/"
>
> But using no quotes will definitely not work. (And that was not a full path
> name anyway.)
>
>>
>>
>> Could someone please help me with the correct syntax?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Ravi
>>
>>   Year   AO      GNP          CP   OP
>> 01    1974 .0022     183          2322 189
>> 02    1975 .0024     238          2729 206
>> 03    1976 .0027     319          3069 206
>> 04    1977 .0035     408          2763 190
>> 05    1978 .0050     540          2414 199
>> 06    1979 .0064     676          2440 233
>> 07    1980 .0065     785          2430 630
>> 08    1981 .0069     944          2631 740
>> 09    1982 .0078     1036         3155 740
>> 10    1983 .0095     1171         3200 660
>>
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> Heritage Laboratories
> West Hartford, CT
>
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