[R] reading lisp file in R

Thu Jan 18 18:18:07 CET 2018

Yes, and the structure is obviously case-insensitive. More troublesome is probably that there can be multiple ACADEMIC-EMPHASIS entries, which can be tricky to tidify. Also one would need to figure out what is the meaning of lines like

(DEFPROP BOSTON-COLLEGE0 T DUPLICATE)

-pd

> On 18 Jan 2018, at 18:04 , Barry Rowlingson <b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> The file also has a bunch of email headers stuck in the middle of it:
> 
> 
> .....
> 
> (QUALITY-OF-LIFE SCALE:1-5 4)
>  (ACADEMIC-EMPHASIS HEALTH-SCIENCE)
> )
> -------
> -------
> 
> From LEBOWITZ at cs.columbia.edu Mon Feb 22 20:53:02 1988
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> Date: Mon 18 Jan 88 20:13:54-EST
> From: Michael Lebowitz <LEBOWITZ at CS.COLUMBIA.EDU>
> Subject: bigger file part 3
> To: souders%meridian at ADS.ARPA
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> 
> (DEF-INSTANCE GEORGETOWN
>  (STATE MARYLAND)
>  (LOCATION URBAN)
>  (CONTROL PRIVATE)
>  (NO-OF-STUDENTS THOUS:10-15)
>  (MALE:FEMALE RATIO:45:55)
> ....
> 
> Which dates it to 1988. Nice.
> 
> Barry
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 9:20 AM, Peter Crowther <peter.crowther at melandra.com
>> wrote:
> 
>> That's a nice example of why Lisp is both powerful and terrifying - you're
>> looking at a Lisp *program*, not just Lisp *data*, as Lisp makes no
>> distinction between the two.  You just read 'em in.
>> 
>> The two definitions at the bottom are function definitions.  The top one
>> defines the def-instance function.  Reading that indicates that it accepts
>> an atom as a name and a list of key-value or key-range-value lists as
>> properties, where they keys may be repeated to give you multi-valued
>> attributes in your result.  The bottom one defines a function for removing
>> duplicate entries of the same location.
>> 
>> The rest of the file (apart from the included email headers) is a whole
>> load of calls to the def-instance function.  In Lisp, you'd define the
>> functions, then just run the rest of the file.
>> 
>> To my knowledge, there is no generic way to read Lisp "data" into anything
>> else, because of this quirk that data can look like anything.  If anyone
>> can correct me on that, great, but I'd be somewhat surprised.  Therefore,
>> as David intimated, the tools you need are generic tools for handling text,
>> and you'll have to deal with the formatting yourself.  If I were doing a
>> one-off transform of this file, I'd probably reach for vi... but I'm an old
>> Unix hacker.  I certainly wouldn't teach that tooling.  awk or perl could
>> certainly handle it; or if you want to give students a wider view of the
>> world you might wish to try ANTLR and get them to write a grammar to parse
>> the file.  The Clojure grammar (
>> https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/clojure/Clojure.g4) would
>> be an interesting place to start, although Terence Parr's comment of "match
>> a bunch of crap in parentheses" would probably give a flavour of what to
>> implement.  Depends what else the students are learning.
>> 
>> Hope this helps rather than hinders.
>> 
>> - Peter
>> 
>> On 18 January 2018 at 05:25, Ranjan Maitra <maitra at email.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thanks! I am trying to use it in R. (Actually, I try to give my students
>>> experiences with different kinds of files and I was wondering if there
>> were
>>> tools available for such kinds of files. I don't know Lisp so I do not
>>> actually know what the lines towards the bottom of the file mean.(
>>> 
>>> Many thanks for your response!
>>> 
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Ranjan
>>> 
>>> On Wed, 17 Jan 2018 20:59:48 -0800 David Winsemius <
>> dwinsemius at comcast.net>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 17, 2018, at 8:22 PM, Ranjan Maitra <maitra at email.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Dear friends,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Is there a way to read data files written in lisp into R?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here is the file: https://archive.ics.uci.edu/
>>> ml/machine-learning-databases/university/university.data
>>>>> 
>>>>> I would like to read it into R. Any suggestions?
>>>> 
>>>> It's just a text file. What difficulties are you having?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks very much in advance for pointers on this and best wishes,
>>>>> Ranjan
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
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>>>>> 
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
>>> posting-guide.html
>>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>> 
>>>> David Winsemius
>>>> Alameda, CA, USA
>>>> 
>>>> 'Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.'
>>> -Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law
>>>> 
>>>> ______________________________________________
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>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
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>>> posting-guide.html
>>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>>> ______________________________________________
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>>> 
>> 
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
>> posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
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