[R] how to separate string from numbers in a large txt file
William Dunlap
wdun|@p @end|ng |rom t|bco@com
Fri May 17 17:20:13 CEST 2019
Consider using readLines() and strcapture() for reading such a file. E.g.,
suppose readLines(files) produced a character vector like
x <- c("2016-10-21 10:35:36 <Jane Doe> What's your login",
"2016-10-21 10:56:29 <John Doe> John_Doe",
"2016-10-21 10:56:37 <John Doe> Admit#8242",
"October 23, 1819 12:34 <Jane Eyre> I am not an angel")
Then you can make a data.frame with columns When, Who, and What by
supplying a pattern containing three parenthesized capture expressions:
> z <- strcapture("^([[:digit:]]{4}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}
[[:digit:]]{2}:[[:digit:]]{2}:[[:digit:]]{2}) +(<[^>]*>) *(.*$)",
x, proto=data.frame(stringsAsFactors=FALSE, When="", Who="",
What=""))
> str(z)
'data.frame': 4 obs. of 3 variables:
$ When: chr "2016-10-21 10:35:36" "2016-10-21 10:56:29" "2016-10-21
10:56:37" NA
$ Who : chr "<Jane Doe>" "<John Doe>" "<John Doe>" NA
$ What: chr "What's your login" "John_Doe" "Admit#8242" NA
Lines that don't match the pattern result in NA's - you might make a second
pass over the corresponding elements of x with a new pattern.
You can convert the When column from character to time with as.POSIXct().
Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 8:30 PM David Winsemius <dwinsemius using comcast.net>
wrote:
>
> On 5/16/19 3:53 PM, Michael Boulineau wrote:
> > OK. So, I named the object test and then checked the 6347th item
> >
> >> test <- readLines ("hangouts-conversation.txt)
> >> test [6347]
> > [1] "2016-10-21 10:56:37 <John Doe> Admit#8242"
> >
> > Perhaps where it was getting screwed up is, since the end of this is a
> > number (8242), then, given that there's no space between the number
> > and what ought to be the next row, R didn't know where to draw the
> > line. Sure enough, it looks like this when I go to the original file
> > and control f "#8242"
> >
> > 2016-10-21 10:35:36 <Jane Doe> What's your login
> > 2016-10-21 10:56:29 <John Doe> John_Doe
> > 2016-10-21 10:56:37 <John Doe> Admit#8242
>
>
> An octothorpe is an end of line signifier and is interpreted as allowing
> comments. You can prevent that interpretation with suitable choice of
> parameters to `read.table` or `read.csv`. I don't understand why that
> should cause anu error or a failure to match that pattern.
>
> > 2016-10-21 11:00:13 <Jane Doe> Okay so you have a discussion
> >
> > Again, it doesn't look like that in the file. Gmail automatically
> > formats it like that when I paste it in. More to the point, it looks
> > like
> >
> > 2016-10-21 10:35:36 <Jane Doe> What's your login2016-10-21 10:56:29
> > <John Doe> John_Doe2016-10-21 10:56:37 <John Doe> Admit#82422016-10-21
> > 11:00:13 <Jane Doe> Okay so you have a discussion
> >
> > Notice Admit#82422016. So there's that.
> >
> > Then I built object test2.
> >
> > test2 <- sub("^(.{10}) (.{8}) (<.+>) (.+$)", "//1,//2,//3,//4", test)
> >
> > This worked for 84 lines, then this happened.
>
> It may have done something but as you later discovered my first code for
> the pattern was incorrect. I had tested it (and pasted in the results of
> the test) . The way to refer to a capture class is with back-slashes
> before the numbers, not forward-slashes. Try this:
>
>
> > newvec <- sub("^(.{10}) (.{8}) (<.+>) (.+$)", "\\1,\\2,\\3,\\4", chrvec)
> > newvec
> [1] "2016-07-01,02:50:35,<john>,hey"
> [2] "2016-07-01,02:51:26,<jane>,waiting for plane to Edinburgh"
> [3] "2016-07-01,02:51:45,<john>,thinking about my boo"
> [4] "2016-07-01,02:52:07,<jane>,nothing crappy has happened, not really"
> [5] "2016-07-01,02:52:20,<john>,plane went by pretty fast, didn't sleep"
> [6] "2016-07-01,02:54:08,<jane>,no idea what time it is or where I am
> really"
> [7] "2016-07-01,02:54:17,<john>,just know it's london"
> [8] "2016-07-01,02:56:44,<jane>,you are probably asleep"
> [9] "2016-07-01,02:58:45,<jane>,I hope fish was fishy in a good eay"
> [10] "2016-07-01 02:58:56 <jone>"
> [11] "2016-07-01 02:59:34 <jane>"
> [12] "2016-07-01,03:02:48,<john>,British security is a little more
> rigorous..."
>
>
> I made note of the fact that the 10th and 11th lines had no commas.
>
> >
> >> test2 [84]
> > [1] "2016-06-28 21:12:43 *** John Doe ended a video chat"
>
> That line didn't have any "<" so wasn't matched.
>
>
> You could remove all none matching lines for pattern of
>
> dates<space>times<space>"<"<name>">"<space><anything>
>
>
> with:
>
>
> chrvec <- chrvec[ grepl("^.{10} .{8} <.+> .+$)", chrvec)]
>
>
> Do read:
>
> ?read.csv
>
> ?regex
>
>
> --
>
> David
>
>
> >> test2 [85]
> > [1] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> >> test [85]
> > [1] "2016-07-01 02:50:35 <John Doe> hey"
> >
> > Notice how I toggled back and forth between test and test2 there. So,
> > whatever happened with the regex, it happened in the switch from 84 to
> > 85, I guess. It went on like
> >
> > [990] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [991] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [992] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [993] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [994] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [995] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [996] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [997] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [998] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [999] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> > [1000] "//1,//2,//3,//4"
> >
> > up until line 1000, then I reached max.print.
>
> > Michael
> >
> > On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:05 PM David Winsemius <dwinsemius using comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 5/16/19 12:30 PM, Michael Boulineau wrote:
> >>> Thanks for this tip on etiquette, David. I will be sure and not do
> that again.
> >>>
> >>> I tried the read.fwf from the foreign package, with a code like this:
> >>>
> >>> d <- read.fwf("hangouts-conversation.txt",
> >>> widths= c(10,10,20,40),
> >>> col.names=c("date","time","person","comment"),
> >>> strip.white=TRUE)
> >>>
> >>> But it threw this error:
> >>>
> >>> Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec
> = dec, :
> >>> line 6347 did not have 4 elements
> >>
> >> So what does line 6347 look like? (Use `readLines` and print it out.)
> >>
> >>> Interestingly, though, the error only happened when I increased the
> >>> width size. But I had to increase the size, or else I couldn't "see"
> >>> anything. The comment was so small that nothing was being captured by
> >>> the size of the column. so to speak.
> >>>
> >>> It seems like what's throwing me is that there's no comma that
> >>> demarcates the end of the text proper. For example:
> >> Not sure why you thought there should be a comma. Lines usually end
> >> with <cr> and or a <lf>.
> >>
> >>
> >> Once you have the raw text in a character vector from `readLines` named,
> >> say, 'chrvec', then you could selectively substitute commas for spaces
> >> with regex. (Now that you no longer desire to remove the dates and
> times.)
> >>
> >> sub("^(.{10}) (.{8}) (<.+>) (.+$)", "//1,//2,//3,//4", chrvec)
> >>
> >> This will not do any replacements when the pattern is not matched. See
> >> this test:
> >>
> >>
> >> > newvec <- sub("^(.{10}) (.{8}) (<.+>) (.+$)", "\\1,\\2,\\3,\\4",
> chrvec)
> >> > newvec
> >> [1] "2016-07-01,02:50:35,<john>,hey"
> >> [2] "2016-07-01,02:51:26,<jane>,waiting for plane to Edinburgh"
> >> [3] "2016-07-01,02:51:45,<john>,thinking about my boo"
> >> [4] "2016-07-01,02:52:07,<jane>,nothing crappy has happened, not
> really"
> >> [5] "2016-07-01,02:52:20,<john>,plane went by pretty fast, didn't
> sleep"
> >> [6] "2016-07-01,02:54:08,<jane>,no idea what time it is or where I am
> >> really"
> >> [7] "2016-07-01,02:54:17,<john>,just know it's london"
> >> [8] "2016-07-01,02:56:44,<jane>,you are probably asleep"
> >> [9] "2016-07-01,02:58:45,<jane>,I hope fish was fishy in a good eay"
> >> [10] "2016-07-01 02:58:56 <jone>"
> >> [11] "2016-07-01 02:59:34 <jane>"
> >> [12] "2016-07-01,03:02:48,<john>,British security is a little more
> >> rigorous..."
> >>
> >>
> >> You should probably remove the "empty comment" lines.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> David.
> >>
> >>> 2016-07-01 15:34:30 <John Doe> Lame. We were in a starbucks2016-07-01
> >>> 15:35:02 <Jane Doe> Hmm that's interesting2016-07-01 15:35:09 <Jane
> >>> Doe> You must want coffees2016-07-01 15:35:25 <John Doe> There was
> >>> lots of Starbucks in my day2016-07-01 15:35:47
> >>>
> >>> It was interesting, too, when I pasted the text into the email, it
> >>> self-formatted into the way I wanted it to look. I had to manually
> >>> make it look like it does above, since that's the way that it looks in
> >>> the txt file. I wonder if it's being organized by XML or something.
> >>>
> >>> Anyways, There's always a space between the two sideways carrots, just
> >>> like there is right now: <John Doe> See. Space. And there's always a
> >>> space between the data and time. Like this. 2016-07-01 15:34:30 See.
> >>> Space. But there's never a space between the end of the comment and
> >>> the next date. Like this: We were in a starbucks2016-07-01 15:35:02
> >>> See. starbucks and 2016 are smooshed together.
> >>>
> >>> This code is also on the table right now too.
> >>>
> >>> a <- read.table("E:/working
> >>> directory/-189/hangouts-conversation2.txt", quote="\"",
> >>> comment.char="", fill=TRUE)
> >>>
> >>>
> h<-cbind(hangouts.conversation2[,1:2],hangouts.conversation2[,3:5],hangouts.conversation2[,6:9])
> >>>
> >>> aa<-gsub("[^[:digit:]]","",h)
> >>> my.data.num <- as.numeric(str_extract(h, "[0-9]+"))
> >>>
> >>> Those last lines are a work in progress. I wish I could import a
> >>> picture of what it looks like when it's translated into a data frame.
> >>> The fill=TRUE helped to get the data in table that kind of sort of
> >>> works, but the comments keep bleeding into the data and time column.
> >>> It's like
> >>>
> >>> 2016-07-01 15:59:17 <Jane Doe> Seriously I've never been
> >>> over there
> >>> 2016-07-01 15:59:27 <Jane Doe> It confuses me :(
> >>>
> >>> And then, maybe, the "seriously" will be in a column all to itself, as
> >>> will be the "I've'"and the "never" etc.
> >>>
> >>> I will use a regular expression if I have to, but it would be nice to
> >>> keep the dates and times on there. Originally, I thought they were
> >>> meaningless, but I've since changed my mind on that count. The time of
> >>> day isn't so important. But, especially since, say, Gmail itself knows
> >>> how to quickly recognize what it is, I know it can be done. I know
> >>> this data has structure to it.
> >>>
> >>> Michael
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 8:47 PM David Winsemius <
> dwinsemius using comcast.net> wrote:
> >>>> On 5/15/19 4:07 PM, Michael Boulineau wrote:
> >>>>> I have a wild and crazy text file, the head of which looks like this:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:50:35 <john> hey
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:51:26 <jane> waiting for plane to Edinburgh
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:51:45 <john> thinking about my boo
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:52:07 <jane> nothing crappy has happened, not really
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:52:20 <john> plane went by pretty fast, didn't sleep
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:54:08 <jane> no idea what time it is or where I am
> really
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:54:17 <john> just know it's london
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:56:44 <jane> you are probably asleep
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:58:45 <jane> I hope fish was fishy in a good eay
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:58:56 <jone>
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 02:59:34 <jane>
> >>>>> 2016-07-01 03:02:48 <john> British security is a little more
> rigorous...
> >>>> Looks entirely not-"crazy". Typical log file format.
> >>>>
> >>>> Two possibilities: 1) Use `read.fwf` from pkg foreign; 2) Use regex
> >>>> (i.e. the sub-function) to strip everything up to the "<". Read
> >>>> `?regex`. Since that's not a metacharacters you could use a pattern
> >>>> ".+<" and replace with "".
> >>>>
> >>>> And do read the Posting Guide. Cross-posting to StackOverflow and
> Rhelp,
> >>>> at least within hours of each, is considered poor manners.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>>
> >>>> David.
> >>>>
> >>>>> It goes on for a while. It's a big file. But I feel like it's going
> to
> >>>>> be difficult to annotate with the coreNLP library or package. I'm
> >>>>> doing natural language processing. In other words, I'm curious as to
> >>>>> how I would shave off the dates, that is, to make it look like:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> <john> hey
> >>>>> <jane> waiting for plane to Edinburgh
> >>>>> <john> thinking about my boo
> >>>>> <jane> nothing crappy has happened, not really
> >>>>> <john> plane went by pretty fast, didn't sleep
> >>>>> <jane> no idea what time it is or where I am really
> >>>>> <john> just know it's london
> >>>>> <jane> you are probably asleep
> >>>>> <jane> I hope fish was fishy in a good eay
> >>>>> <jone>
> >>>>> <jane>
> >>>>> <john> British security is a little more rigorous...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> To be clear, then, I'm trying to clean a large text file by writing a
> >>>>> regular expression? such that I create a new object with no numbers
> or
> >>>>> dates.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Michael
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ______________________________________________
> >>>>> R-help using 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.
> >>> ______________________________________________
> >>> R-help using 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.
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help using 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.
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help using 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.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using 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]]
More information about the R-help
mailing list