[R] Read

[Bill Dunlap]

You said the column values were separated by space characters.
Copying the text from gmail shows that some column names and column
values are separated by single spaces (e.g., between x1 and x2) and
some by multiple spaces (e.g., between x3 and x4.  Did the mail mess
up the spacing or is there some other way to tell where the omitted
values are?

-Bill

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:54 PM Val <valkremk using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I Tried that one and it did not work. Please see the error message
> Error in read.table(text = "x1  x2  x3 x4\n1 B12 \n2       C23
> \n322 B32      D34 \n4            D44 \n51     D53\n60 D62         ",
> :
>   more columns than column names
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 5:39 PM Bill Dunlap <williamwdunlap using gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Since the columns in the file are separated by a space character, " ",
> > add the read.table argument sep=" ".
> >
> > -Bill
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:21 PM Val <valkremk using gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all, I am trying to read a messy data  but facing  difficulty.  The
> > > data has several columns separated by blank space(s).  Each column
> > > value may have different lengths across the rows.   The first
> > > row(header) has four columns. However, each row may not have the four
> > > column values.  For instance, the first data row has only the first
> > > two column values. The fourth data row has the first and last column
> > > values, the second and the third column values are missing for this
> > > row..  How do I read this data set correctly? Here is my sample data
> > > set, output and desired output.   To make it clear to each data point
> > > I have added the row and column numbers. I cannot use fixed width
> > > format reading because each row  may have different length for  a
> > > given column.
> > >
> > > dat<-read.table(text="x1  x2  x3 x4
> > > 1 B22
> > > 2         C33
> > > 322 B22      D34
> > > 4                 D44
> > > 51         D53
> > > 60 D62            ",header=T, fill=T,na.strings=c("","NA"))
> > >
> > > Output
> > >       x1  x2     x3     x4
> > > 1   1     B12 <NA> NA
> > > 2   2    C23 <NA>  NA
> > > 3 322  B32  D34   NA
> > > 4   4   D44  <NA>  NA
> > > 5  51 D53  <NA>   NA
> > > 6  60 D62  <NA>  NA
> > >
> > >
> > > Desired output
> > >    x1   x2     x3       x4
> > > 1   1    B22    <NA>   NA
> > > 2   2   <NA>  C33     NA
> > > 3 322  B32    NA      D34
> > > 4   4   <NA>   NA      D44
> > > 5  51  <NA>  D53     NA
> > > 6  60   D62   <NA>   NA
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > >
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