[R] problems reading XML type file from ishares website

[Jeff Newmiller]

Er, I failed to include the step to write the repaired data to a file...

fnamenobom  <- "nobom.xml"
cat( paste( txt, collapse="\n" ), file=fnamenobom )
xmlfile  <- xmlTreeParse( fnamenobom )

-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On July 28, 2016 11:20:23 AM PDT, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
>Please keep the list included in the thread (e.g. reply-all?).
>
>I looked at the file and agree that it looks like xml with a utf8 byte
>order mark and Unix line endings, which means it is not XLS and it is
>not XLSX (which is a zipped directory of xml files with DOS line
>endings). Excel complains but manages to open the file if it has the
>XLS extension,  but I am not aware that any of the usual R Excel
>packages will understand this file. 
>
>The byte order mark can be addressed by opening the file with
>encoding="UTF-8-BOM", but as you mentioned originally the XML structure
>is still broken (c.f. the error message about the Style ending tag).
>Line 16 seems to use /Style rather than /ss:Style. Maybe
>
>library(XML)
>txt <- readLines( fname, encoding="UTF-8-BOM" )
>txt <- sub( "</Style>", "</ss:Style>", txt )
>fnamenobom  <- "nobom.xml"
>xmlfile  <- xmlTreeParse( "nobom.xml" )