[R] read.table() with "\t" as seperator, all other programs report equal fields each row, read.table() returns unequal row length error

[Yong Wang]

hi, list

R is undoudtedly my favorite statistic tool, however, the data
inputnpart has long been a pain. most data I have to deal with are
irregular and contains special character.

Recently I get a tab delimited data, read.table(filename,sep="\t")
constantly return erors for certain rows does not has xyz elements
while all other programs such as perl,python, awk all report equal row
length if use "\t" as seperator.

I scout through the problematic row, sometimes it is because a row
contains a "#", so I go back to specify comment.char=""
next it will be some other problems, for some rows I simply can't
figure out what the problem is.

can I have any guru suggestion to save this pain now and in the
future, is CSV a safer format? or can anyone let me know what are the
fundamental principles I must bear in mind when do preliminary data
processing using other programs such as perl to ensure the output can
be readily feed into R.

best

yong