[R] Error: not 'a real'?

[Milan Bouchet-Valat]

Le samedi 20 octobre 2012 à 14:25 +0200, Brian a écrit :
> Hi Jim,
> 
> On 10/20/12 13:36, Jim Holtman wrote:
> > how about supplying the context  of the error. Show the lines in the file where the error occurred.
>  >
>  > Sent from my iPad
>  >
>  > On Oct 20, 2012, at 7:21, Brian <zenlines at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >> Hi List,
>  >>
>  >> when supplying a vector of atomic vector classes to read.table, I get:
>  >> # column classes
>  >> colClasses=c("character", "character","numeric", "numeric", 
> "numeric", "numeric", "numeric", "numeric",
>  >> "numeric", "numeric", "numeric", "numeric")
>  >> # Error:
>  >> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, 
> na.strings, (from #2) :
> 
> Line #2: (with 'skip=4', so really line 4, but the first line after the 
> 'header', as indicated above)
> 
> LAE;201001010000;2;894.6;3.9;93.8;5.3;3.1;204
> 
> 
> >> scan() expected 'a real',  got '894.6'
>  >>
>  >> How is '894.6' not 'a real [number]'?
>  >>
>  >> Thanks for the ensuing enlightenment or punishment...
>  >>
>  >> Best,
>  >> Brian
>  >>
>  >> ______________________________________________
>  >> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>  >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>  >> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>  >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> my full command:
> 
>    read.csv2(file=file, skip=2, na.strings = "-",
>              colClasses=c("character", "character","numeric", "numeric",
>                "numeric", "numeric", "numeric", "numeric"))
Why didn't you tell us that you were using read.csv2() and not
read.table() directly? read.csv() passes dec="," to read.table(), which
explains why numbers with a dot are not detected as reals. Just pass
dec="." to fix the problem


Regards

> Also, sorry I forgot this:
> 
> R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22)
> Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> 
> locale:
> [1] C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  base
> 
> other attached packages:
> [1] MASS_7.3-18
> 
> Thanks again.
> Brian
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.