[R] Diagnostic and helper functions for defective & hard-to-import files

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 14-01-28 11:43 PM, andrewH wrote:> Hi Folks!
 > I have been writing a small set of utilities for dealing with files 
that are
 > hard to open correctly for one reason or another, especially because they
 > are too big for memory, non-rectangular, or contain odd characters or
 > unexpected codings, or all of these things together. Today it 
suddenly hit
 > me that this has probably been done, done better, and upgraded to package
 > form a dozen times already. There were pointers to a couple functions 
useful
 > in this regard in the Core Import/Export document.  But my effort to 
come up
 > with search terms that were productive of such packages was unsuccessful.
 >
 > I would be grateful if someone would point me toward such a package or
 > packages if they exist.
 >

The hexView package is useful for figuring out what's there after you 
have trouble reading something, or figuring out how to read an unknown 
file type.

The showNonASCII and showNonASCIIFile functions in the tools package are 
also helpful.

I don't know of other examples.

Duncan Murdoch