Hi,

 

I have a data file, certain lines of which are character fields.  I would
like to skip these rows, and read the data file as a numeric data frame.  I
know that I can skip lines at the beginning with read.table and scan, but is
there a way to skip a specified sequence of lines (e.g., 1, 2, 10, 11, 19,
20, 28, 29, etc.) ?  

 

If I read the entire data file, and then delete the character fields, the
values are still kept as factors, with each value denoted by its level.
Since, I have continuous variables, there are as many levels as there are
values.  I am unable to coerce this to "numeric" mode.  Is there a way to do
this so that I can then manipulate the numeric data frame?

 

Thanks for any help.

Best,

Ravi.

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Ravi Varadhan, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, The Center on Aging and Health

Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology 

Johns Hopkins University

Ph: (410) 502-2619

Fax: (410) 614-9625

Email: rvaradhan@jhmi.edu

Webpage:  http://www.jhsph.edu/agingandhealth/People/Faculty/Varadhan.html

 

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