[R-SIG-Mac] Some introductory questions

[Mike Feher]

Hi Brodie,

Thanks for your suggestions, I definitely appreciate it.

Yes, I realize these aren’t Mac-specific questions, so forgive a new member
the mistake of accidentally posting to the wrong listserv.  I realized that
after the fact, but there it is.

I think I discovered two problems today that I got worked out.  The first
was a permissions problem that is macOS-specific: I installed XQuartz, and
inside my xterms, I was unable even execute simple commands such as ‘ls’.
Google to the rescue.  After that, I got the permissions sorted out, and
those commands worked just fine.  I suspect because I couldn’t even do
things like that, that that’s why I was getting (IIRC) “Operation not
permitted” errors *inside of R* trying to open a file.  Being new to it, it
appeared to me that R was the cause of my problem.  Once I got that sorted
out, it was no issue.

The second problem was figuring out which file operation method to use.
 file.choose() worked for me, and it was quite easy to wrap this with a
read.table(), so that was a nice bit of learning.  (The CLI did not permit
me to do anything other than type in a fully-qualified path to my data
files, but in R.app, it nicely opened up a file selection dialog, about
which I was very pleased.)

One of the reasons I didn’t initially provide a lot of supplementary
information was that I figured if anyone had any suggestions based on what
the problem sounded like, they might have vectored me in the right
direction.  Typically I provide a lot of detail up front but that ends up
getting lost on people, so I’ve learned to start general and then if
they’re willing to be helpful, I’ll gladly supply the info.

I hadn’t thought of Stack Overflow, but based on the initial reax here, I
started Googling other sites that might provide more useful examples
without the backtalk.  Thirty years on the Internet and some things never
change. ;)

Thank you again!
Mike


On September 7, 2020 at 10:04:29 PM, brodie gaslam (brodie.gaslam using yahoo.com)
wrote:

> On Monday, September 7, 2020, 6:08:51 PM EDT, Mike Feher <
mfeher1971 using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> Here is a snippet of the code I was trying to start with:
>
> filepath1 <- file("/Users/michaelfeher/Documents/R
> Documents/COVID19/20200906-1822-total-cases-jones.data")
> filepath1
> TotalCasesJones <- read.table(filepath1)
>
> This definitely did not work for me.
>
> Mike

Mike,

There are probably a couple of issues here to think about:

1. Do you have reason to think this is a Mac specific issue?  If not
   this is likely not the right mailing list.  Perhaps r-help might be
   better, although I do think you will find more people willing to
   pitch in on Stackoverflow (but avoid cross-posting, so since you
   have already posted here you might need to hope someone is willing
   to provide you an answer).

2. The reason you are getting the reactions you are in this thread
   (apart from the mac-specific issue) is that there is not enough
   information for others to debug your problems.  E.g.  what does the
   file look like, in what way does it "definitely not work"?.  Do you
   get an error?  Or do you import something that doesn't look like
   what you expected?  These are all things that are needed by anyone
   that will want to help you, and it frustrates some that you are not
   providing them of your own initiative.

If I were in your shoes I would try my luck on stackoverflow, or
alternatively, read through several threads on R-help to figure out
how the Q/A process works there and ask questions in ways that are
likely to elicit answers.  This is not easy to do and take some work
to figure out, but when asking for folks time to help you it is a good
idea to try to do some home work ahead of time.

I speak only for myself, and sincerely hope this non-answer is helpful
to you even if it doesn't actually address your questions.

Best,

Brodie.

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