[R] Importing multiple text files with lapply.

[Simon Kiss]

Dear jim,
Yes, it's true, the data are separated onto new lines as follows:
January 11, 2009 
January 11, 2009 
October 19, 2008 
October 13, 2008 
August 16, 2008 
June 19, 2008 
April 19, 2008 
April 16, 2008 
February 9, 2008
September 2, 2007

I tried your attempt and it didn't work either; it returned the error message:
Error in FUN(X[[1L]], ...) : 
  'file' must be a character string or connection

On 2011-01-17, at 2:02 PM, jim holtman wrote:

> try:
> 
> mylist <- lapply(a, read.table, header = TRUE, sep = '\n')
> 
> also is the separator really '\n' meaning a new-line?  What exactly
> does the data look like?
> 
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Simon Kiss <simonjkiss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I'm trying to read in 50 text filess with dates as content to create a list of tables.
>> 
>> a is the list of filenames that need to be read in.
>> 
>> The following command returns the following error
>> mylist<-lapply(a, read.table(header=TRUE, sep="\n"))
>> 
>> Error in read.table(header = TRUE, sep = "\n") :
>>  element 1 is empty;
>>   the part of the args list of 'is.character' being evaluated was:
>>   (file)
>> 
>> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>> Yours, Simon Kiss
>> *********************************
>> Simon J. Kiss, PhD
>> Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
>> 73 George Street
>> Brantford, Ontario, Canada
>> N3T 2C9
>> Cell: +1 519 761 7606
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jim Holtman
> Data Munger Guru
> 
> What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

*********************************
Simon J. Kiss, PhD
Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
73 George Street
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
N3T 2C9
Cell: +1 519 761 7606