Hi Frauke,

Try unix commands with R's system() function.

Example:
Let's say you have a matrix like this in the file (note: the first element
is missing) called hello.txt
10 100
2 20 200
3 30 300
4 40 400
5 50 500

You can try something like:

hello = system("cut -f1 hello.txt", intern=T)

VP.

On 11 March 2012 19:07, frauke <fhoss@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Dear R community,
>
> I have the following problem I hoped you could help me with.
>
> My data is save in thousand of files with a weird extension containing for
> numbers and a z. For example *.1405z. With list.files I managed to load
> this
> data into R. It looks like this (the row numbers are not in the original
> file):
>
> 35                             :LATEST STAGE     3.60 FT AT 730 AM CST ON
> 0102
> 36                          .ER ARCT2    0102 C
> DC200001020813/DH12/HGIFF/DIH6
> 37                   :QPF FORECAST        6AM       NOON        6PM
> MDNT
> 38                   .E1 :0102:              /       3.5/       3.4/
> 3.5
> 39                   .E2 :0103:   /       3.5/       3.0/       2.5/
> 2.1
> 40                   .E3 :0104:   /       1.8/       1.5/       1.3/
> 1.2
> 41                   .E4 :0105:   /       1.2/       1.8/       2.3/
> 2.7
> 42                   .E5 :0106:   /       3.0/       3.0/       3.1/
> 3.3
> 43                                                    .E6 :0107:   /
> 3.4
>
> I need the table in rows 37 to 43 in a matrix, for example:
> 0201     NA    3.5    3.4    3.5
> 0103     3.5    3.0    2.5     2.1
> 0104     1.8    1.5    1.3    1.2
> 0105    1.2     1.8    2.3    2.7
> 0106     3.0    3.0    3.1    3.3
> 0107     3.4    NA    NA   NA
>
>  Unfortunately the row numbers vary per file.  I can call up each line with
> file[40,1] for line 40 for example. It returns:
> [1] .E3 :0104:   /       1.8/       1.5/       1.3/       1.2
> 38 Levels: .E1 :0102:              /       3.5/       3.4/       3.5 ...
>
>  So I have two problems really:
> 1. How do I detect the table in the file (resp. the line where the table
> starts)?
> 2. How do I break up each line to write the values into a matrix?
>
> Feel free to suggest an entirely different approach if you think that is
> helpful.
>
> Thanks a lot! Frauke
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/extracting-data-from-unstructured-text-file-tp4464423p4464423.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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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