[R] XLConnect readWorksheet comma decimal sign

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Mon Dec 2 21:28:38 CET 2013


On Dec 2, 2013, at 1:17 AM, Knut Krueger wrote:

> Am 29.11.2013 20:39, schrieb David Winsemius:
>>> Thats impossible, we are used to hit the comma
>> I don't know what that means.
> it is common here, that the decimal sign is commy

Believe me, I _do_ understand that in Europe it is common to use a comma as a decimal-sign. I told you how to adjust that for data input using `read.table` at the time of data input. R uses the period internally in all locales as the decimal separator. There is no mechanism that I know of that allows the console output to be with the period. For output with `write.table` you can again specify the use of the comma as the decimal separator and some other character as the field separator. In fact you can set that globally with:

?options

> options()$OutDec  # my setting
[1] "."

 If you continue having difficulty using XLConnect, then you should contact the authors of that package.

> All computer in the cip-pools are using the "comma" ( an I think 99.9% of all other computers here)
> Can you imagine what would happen after  changing  this to dot?
> Or in the other way, try to get the people in your country to use the ,comma as separator. It would cause a big jumble.
> 
>> Until you show a reproducible example, we will not be able to offer further advice: 
> That*s the problem ... I am still trying to find out  what happened. It was definitely wrong in two cases
> I was sure that I found the reason when starting this tread...
> 
> Knut
> 

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA



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