[R] A slight trap in read.table/read.csv.

[Ivan Calandra]

To answer your questions, French people don't have 'Vrai' and 'Faux'. 
Since most of people have no idea what "csv" means, there's no use for 
using "dsv"! The "Académie Française" would not be happy indeed.

But to keep on the subject, I personally never had troubles using T or 
F. I sometimes use T/F, sometimes TRUE/FALSE, depending on my mood!
Looks like I should think about using TRUE/FALSE all the time, but since 
I've never had problems, I don't feel bad with it!

Ivan

Le 3/9/2010 10:00, Barry Rowlingson a écrit :
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 8:11 AM, Patrick Connolly
> <p_connolly at slingshot.co.nz>  wrote:
>
>    
>> If you use ESS, you have the benefit of completions.  Depending on
>> what else could begin with T or F, you can press the TAB key after
>> typing the first letter or two.  Admittedly, three keystrokes isn't
>> much shorter than TRUE -- but they are all with the left hand. You
>> always get at least a 40% discount with FALSE. :-) -- except in the
>> 'unlikely event' that you have objects named FALLOW or something
>> else a lot like FALSE.
>>      
>   "FALSETTO"? Anyone analysing choral music in R?
>
>   I'd somehow got the impression that T and F were going to be removed
> as values, but there's no mention of it in ?FALSE. The package check
> utilities warn you if you use them.
>
>   Just looking at the source for the underlying cause of the read.csv
> behaviour, which is type.convert in R which is do_typecvt in C, and it
> admits:
>
> /* This is a horrible hack
>
> There's a couple of instances of:
>
>   if (strcmp(s, "F") == 0 || strcmp(s, "FALSE")
>
> which are what do it. And are obviously not language-dependent - do
> French people have 'VRAI' and 'FAUX' in their CSV files? Do they call
> them DSV files:
> http://translate.google.com/#en|fr|comma-separated%20file
>
> Got to keep the Academie Francaise happy...
>
> Barry
>
>    

-- 
Ivan CALANDRA
PhD Student
University of Hamburg
Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum
Abt. Säugetiere
Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3
D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY
+49(0)40 42838 6231
ivan.calandra at uni-hamburg.de

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