[R] need held to build a loop for reading multiple datasets

[David Winsemius]

On Aug 7, 2013, at 11:31 AM, Philipp Rath wrote:

> Hello r-community,
> 
> my name is philipp and i´m studying economics at the university of bonn.
> I´m writing a paper about an experimental entry game and need help to write a for loop.
> 
> for (i in 0:7) {
> 
> data <- read.table("~/Uni/SoSe 13/Bachelorarbeit/entryGameAnalysis/analysis/data/23.04.13...10H/GROUP0/0/history.txt", sep="\t" , header=TRUE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, strip.white = TRUE)
> data[5]
> }
> 
> the goal is to read column 5 of the history.txt for GROUP0/0, GROUP0/1,…..GROUP0/7.
> 

Something along these lines (and do note that your current arrangement would overwrite the previous file with each iteration and executing data[5] would have done nothing, since no assignment was made):

datalist<-list()
for (i in 0:7) {

datalist[[i]] <- read.table(file=paste0("~/Uni/SoSe 13/Bachelorarbeit/entryGameAnalysis/analysis/data/23.04.13...10H/GROUP0/",i,"/history.txt"), sep="\t" , header=TRUE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, strip.white = TRUE, colClasses=c(rep(NULL,4), "character",rep(NULL,1000))

}

Using colClasses to extract only the 5th column.

-- 

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA