[R] Read TXT file with variable separation

[Jan van der Laan]

Raphael,

This looks like fixed width format which you can read with read.fwf.

In fixed width format the columns are not separated by white space (or  
other characters), but are identified by the positition in the file.  
So in your file, for example the first field looks to contained in the  
first 2 columns of your file (the first 2 characters of every line),  
the second field in the next five columns, etc.

Regards,
Jan


Citeren Raphael Saldanha <saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com>:

> Hi!
>
> I have to import some TXT files into R, but the separation between the
> columns are made with different blank spaces, but each file use the
> same separation. Example:
>
> 31  104 5 0   11RUA                 SAO
> SEBASTIAO                                                         25
>
>
>
>  BAIRRO FILETO
>                                                   01
>                                                     00200338540000
>
> The pattern is the same on each file.
>
> There is two sample files attached to this message.
>
> I would like to figure out how to import a single file, and the use
> some code to import several files (like this
> http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/code/read_multiple.htm)
>
> When I try read.table, I receive this:
>
> cnefe <- read.table("sample1.txt", header=FALSE)
> Erro em scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings,  :
>   linha 1 não tinha 17 elementos
>
>
> Information about my session:
>
>> sessionInfo()R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16)Platform:  
>> i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> locale:[1] LC_COLLATE=Portuguese_Brazil.1252
> LC_CTYPE=Portuguese_Brazil.1252   [3]
> LC_MONETARY=Portuguese_Brazil.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=Portuguese_Brazil.1252
> attached base packages:[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils
> datasets  methods   base
>
> --
> Atenciosamente,
>
> Raphael Saldanha
> saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com