[R] reading data from multiple files with multiple headers

[Weidong Gu]

If you know how many lines to skip, you can set skip=xx in read.table.
The question is what you can do if you have variable lines to skip in
various files but you have characters indicating the begining of the
data, like ~A.  What you can do is get the file in using readLines,
use grep to find the line where the character locates. Then, you can
specify skip in read.table to input your data.

HTH

Weidong Gu

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Julius Tesoro <jutesoro at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
>
> I have many files with a lot of headers and text at the beginning of the file. The headers are not uniform though and they contain different sizes Is there a way where I can read a table and skip all of the headers/text on top of it until I encounter a certain text pattern? Here is an example. I just want to read the table after the ~A.
>
>
> ~Version Information
>  VERS.              2.00:     CWLS log ASCII Standard -VERSION 2.00
>  WRAP.                NO:     One line per depth step
> #
> #
> ~Well Information Block
> #MNEM.UNIT     Data Type                      Description
> #---------     -----------                    ----------------
>  STRT.M             51.000                    :START DEPTH
>  STOP.M               .010                    :STOP DEPTH
>  STEP.M              -.010                    :STEP
> #
> #
> ~Curve Information Block
> #MNEM.UNIT                        Curve Description
> #---------                        -----------------------------
>  DEPT.M                           :DEPTH
>  GRDE.GAPI                        :GAMMA FROM DENSITY TOOL
>  CODE.G/C3                        :COMPENSATED DENSITY
> #
>
> #
> #
> ~A  Depth       GRDE       CODE       LSDU       BRDU       CADE       DENL       DENB       ADEN       VL2F       VL4F       VL6F       VL2A
>     51.000    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.990    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.980    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.970    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.960    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.950    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>     50.940    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25    -999.25
>
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