[R] import csv file into R, strange problem

[Uwe Ligges]

On 14.09.2011 10:28, Rainer M Krug wrote:
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> On 13/09/11 18:08, bonnieyuan wrote:
>> Hi, I used read.csv(file name, header=T, sep=",") to bring in a csv
>> file I saved in MS Excel. The strange thing is all the data ended
>> up in one big column. The number of rows match with the number of
>> observations, but all the variables got squeezed into one column.
>> Also the first row where the header is, the variables names have a
>> dot between them, replacing the comma that's in the original csv
>> file.
>>
>> What did I do wrong here?
>
> Maybe Microsoft? We had the problem in South Adfrica, that if the
> locale was set to South African English, then the csv was ";"
> seperated - don't tell me why.

Probably MS expects that South Africans, like Germans, use a comma "," 
as the decimal "point", and hence the separator is ";". That's why 
read.csv2() is available - reading that pseudo comma separated format..

Uwe Ligges


>
> So: check your csv if it is really a csv.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rainer
>
>
>>
>> -- View this message in context:
>> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/import-csv-file-into-R-strange-problem-tp3810470p3810470.html
>>
>>
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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>
>
> - --
> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
> Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>
> Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
> Stellenbosch University
> South Africa
>
> Tel :       +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
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> email:      Rainer at krugs.de
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