[R] Header = T

[Jim Lemon]

On 11/23/2011 06:47 AM, lucky7 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just start to use R today! I am reading the R Help on read.csv and the
> description for header says "header is set to TRUE if and only if the first
> row contains one fewer field than the number of columns". Why is that? My
> data has the same number of fields in the first row as the number of
> columns. I mean I have no problem opening my csv file I am just curious why
> it should be one fewer.
>
Hi lucky7,
This looks like one of those little obscurities that sometimes appear in 
the help files. The default for read.csv is header=TRUE and I guess that 
the "...header is set to TRUE..." part means that if your file has one 
less field in the first line, header will be forced to TRUE as this is a 
part of the CSV specification. As Douglas Adams might have said,

"Don't panic."

Jim