[R] laf_open_fwf

[Jan van der Laan]

Dear Christian,

Well... it shouldn't normally do that. The only way I can currently 
think of that might cause this problem is that the file has \r\n\r\n, 
which would mean that every line is followed by an empty line.

Another cause might be (although I would not really expect the results 
you see) that the sum of your column widths is larger than the actual 
with of the line.

You can check your line lengths using:

lines <- readLines(my.filename)
nchar(lines)

Each line should have the same length and be equal to (or at least 
larger than) sum(my.column.widths)

If this is not the problem: would it be possible that you send me a 
small part of your file so that I could try to reproduce the problem? Or 
if you cannot share your data: replace the actual values with nonsense 
values.

Regards,
Jan

PS I read your mail by chance as I am not a regular r-help reader. When 
you have specific LaF problems it is better to also cc me directly.

On 08/06/2013 12:35 PM, christian.kamenik at astra.admin.ch wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I was trying the (fairly new) LaF package, and came across the following problem:
>
> I opened a connection to a fixed width ASCII file using
> laf_open_fwf(my.filename, my.column_types, my.column_widths, my.column_names)
>
> When looking at the data, it turned out that \n (newline) and \r (carriage return) were considered as characters, thus destroying the structure in my data (the second column does not include any numbers):
>
>> my.data[1565:1575,1:3]
>
>     MF_FARZ1              Fahrzeugarttext MF_MARKE
> 1     \n043 Landwirt. Traktor                2140
> 2     \n043 Landwirt. Traktor                6206
> 3     \n001 Personenwagen                    2026
> 4     \n001 Personenwagen                    2026
> 5    \r\n00 1Personenwagen                    404
> 6    \r\n02 0Gesellschaftswagen               710
> 7    \r\n00 1Personenwagen                    505
> 8    \r\n00 1Personenwagen                    505
> 9    \r\n00 1Personenwagen                    301
> 10   \r\n00 1Personenwagen                    553
> 11   \r\n04 3Landwirt. Traktor                257
>
> I am working on Windows 7 32-bit.
>
> Any help would be highly appreciated.
>
> Best Regard
>
> Christian Kamenik
> Project Manager
>
> Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications DETEC
> Federal Roads Office FEDRO
> Division Road Traffic
> Road Accident Statistics
>
> Mailing Address: 3003 Bern
> Location: Weltpoststrasse 5, 3015 Bern
>
> Tel +41 31 323 14 89
> Fax +41 31 323 43 21
>
> christian.kamenik at astra.admin.ch<mailto:christian.kamenik at astra.admin.ch>
> www.astra.admin.ch<http://www.astra.admin.ch/>
>
>
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