I am able to replicate your problem, using R 2.7.2:

R version 2.7.2 (2008-08-25)
Copyright (C) 2008 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ISBN 3-900051-07-0
...

> source <- read.table("clipboard")
> source
            V1   V2    V3 V4       V5       V6    V7
1 HIT000000001 hg18  chr8  +  1759549  1894206 Human
2 HIT000000005 hg18 chr11  -  8593662  8636959 Human
3 HIT000000007 hg18  chr5  + 31675274 32146794 Human
4 HIT000000011 hg18  chr5  + 79739648 79810715 Human

'data.frame':   4 obs. of  7 variables:
 $ V1: Factor w/ 4 levels "HIT000000001",..: 1 2 3 4
 $ V2: Factor w/ 1 level "hg18": 1 1 1 1
 $ V3: Factor w/ 3 levels "chr11","chr5",..: 3 1 2 2
 $ V4: Factor w/ 2 levels "-","+": 2 1 2 2
 $ V5: int  1759549 8593662 31675274 79739648
 $ V6: int  1894206 8636959 32146794 79810715
 $ V7: Factor w/ 1 level "Human": 1 1 1 1

Plus/minus signs get read into factor variable V4. If spaces b/w the signs
and the numbers are eliminated, everything works as expected.

Aleksey



On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>wrote:

> Please do show us the courtesy of following the posting guide, and make
> sure you use a current version of R.  R 2.7.2 and 2.8.0 beta do not do this,
> and you were asked to update *before* posting.
>
> [My guess is that you are using the long-obsolete 2.7.0.]
>
>
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Gundala Viswanath wrote:
>
>  Dear all,
>>
>> I have the following dataset:
>>
>> # HIT or acc, UCSC genome, chromosome, strand, start, end, species name
>> HIT000000001    hg18    chr8    +   1759549 1894206 Human
>> HIT000000005    hg18    chr11   -   8593662 8636959 Human
>> HIT000000007    hg18    chr5    +   31675274    32146794    Human
>> HIT000000011    hg18    chr5    +   79739648    79810715    Human
>>
>> (also downloadable at http://dpaste.com/82688/plain/  )
>>
>> However with the following command:
>>
>>  source <- read.table("clipboard")
>>> source
>>>
>>               V1   V2    V3 V4        V5        V6    V7
>> 1     HIT000000001 hg18  chr8  0   1759549   1894206 Human
>> 2     HIT000000005 hg18 chr11  0   8593662   8636959 Human
>> 3     HIT000000007 hg18  chr5  0  31675274  32146794 Human
>> 4     HIT000000011 hg18  chr5  0  79739648  79810715 Human
>>
>> Note that the V4 column read.table fail to capture the PLUS/MINUS sign,
>> it gives 0 instead.
>>
>> Is there a way I can enable read.table to recognize those signs?
>>
>>
>> - Gundala Viswanath
>> Jakarta - Indonesia
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
>> 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.
>>
>
> Thar *does* apply to you!
>
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/<http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/%7Eripley/>
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> 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.
>

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