[R] Files with Missing Data

Peter Alspach Peter.Alspach at plantandfood.co.nz
Fri Jul 2 03:38:29 CEST 2010


Tena koe Norman

The default separator for read.table is '' so you need to specify it as a comma:

dfName <- read.table("myfile.csv", sep=',')

or use read.csv().

HTH ....

Peter Alspach

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Norman Jessup
> Sent: Friday, 2 July 2010 1:18 p.m.
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Files with Missing Data
> 
> I'm a new R user so this is possibly a naive question.  I'm trying to
> load an external CSV file into a dataframe using:
> 
>    df_name<-read.table("myfile.csv")
> 
> myfile.csv should have 5 elements per row, though a percentage are
> missing the last two elements (the commas are present as placemarkers).
> However, R does not create the dataset but returns the message:
> 
>      line 1 did not have 2 elements
> 
> but examining the file shows that it does.  These are the first 5 rows:
> 
> DARWIN,NT,800,-12.461334,130.841904
> ALAWA,NT,810,-12.37896,130.874226
> BRINKIN,NT,810,-12.364533,130.869394
> CASUARINA,NT,810,-12.373112,130.883619
> COCONUT GROVE,NT,810,-12.397685,130.852324
> 
> Is R complaining because the first two elements of each row are not
> numeric, or am I doing something else wrong?
> Thanks for your suggestions
> 
> regards
> 
> Norman Jessup
> 
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