[R] read.octave fails with data from Octave > 3.2.X

[Helios de Rosario]

Hi,

I'm afraid that the function read.octave from package "foreign" has
some problems with the ASCII data format exported by new versions of
Octave (later than 3.2.X). It fails even for a simple case as:

[Octave code:]
octave:1> x=1;
octave:2> save -ascii testdata.mat x

[Now in R:]
> octavedata <- read.octave('testdata.mat')
Mensajes de aviso perdidos
In read_octave_unknown(con, type) : cannot handle unknown type ''

In this simple case I guess that the problem is that new versions
Octave append two blank lines after each variable, and this confuses the
current implementation of read.octave()

The problem is worse if the saved variables include other types as
structs, or strings. The new syntax of the MAT files is not recognized
by read.octave().

Of course, it's always difficult to keep this kind of functions working
when the external program changes its specification for saving
variables, but if would be nice if the maintainers of "foreign" could at
least solve the issue of blank lines. That way, it would still be
possible to import simple data types as scalars and matrices.

Otherwise, I suppose that a workaround is saving the data in binary
(matlab) format, then load it with Octave 3.2.X, and save it in text
format from that version.

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.14.2 (2012-02-29)
Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Spanish_Spain.1252  LC_CTYPE=Spanish_Spain.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=Spanish_Spain.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Spanish_Spain.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] foreign_0.8-49




-- 
Helios de Rosario Martínez
 
 Researcher


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