[R-SIG-Mac] Some introductory questions

[peter dalgaard]

Not work how? You need to tell us what kind of errors you see, otherwise, we can only guess.

I'd lose the file() construct. It sets up a connection object, which can be less than useful when read.table reads the file several time in order to decipher the column structure of the file.

So plain

filepath1 <- "/Users/michaelfeher/Documents/R Documents/COVID19/20200906-1822-total-cases-jones.data"

should be OK, provided that the file actually exists. In particular, check that the space in "R Documents" really is a space and not something that just looks like a space (no-break space is a common culprit).

If you can read the file, but it comes out weird, then you need to diddle the arguments to read.table, e.g.

> filepath <- "~/tmp/R files/test.data"
> read.table(filepath)
  V1 V2
1  x  y
2  1  2
3  3  7
4  9 13
> read.table(filepath, header=TRUE)
  x  y
1 1  2
2 3  7
3 9 13


-pd


> On 8 Sep 2020, at 00:04 , 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
> 
> On September 7, 2020 at 3:50:19 AM, peter dalgaard (pdalgd using gmail.com) wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> > On 7 Sep 2020, at 07:09 , Ken Beath <ken using kjbeath.com.au> wrote: 
>> >  
>> >> On 7 Sep 2020, at 9:31 am, Mike Feher <mfeher1971 using gmail.com> wrote: 
>> >  
>> [snip] 
>> >> 4. I tried to read in a set of dummy space-delimited data saved in an 
>> >> absolute path on my computer, but it would not work. I tried something in 
>> >> another path that did not have a subfolder with a space in it (I.e. I plan 
>> >> on storing my data in a folder called “R Documents” or something similar) 
>> >> and that didn’t work either, so I’m still wondering whether or not (a) 
>> >> things have to be in the library location (it seems like you could 
>> >> customize that) and (b) whether R recognizes spaces in file paths. 
>> >>  
>> >  
>> > Try using file.choose() to locate files using a dialog and it will return the full name. Spaces shouldn’t matter provided that everything is enclosed in quotes. Most people don’t use absolute references. They set the working directory and then just use the name of the file. See under the Misc menu.  
>> 
>> Also, how do you "read in" the data? Usually, read.table() or somesuch would be involved, although RStudio has an "Import data" functionality.  
>> 
>> -pd 
>> 
>> --  
>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor, 
>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School 
>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark 
>> Phone: (+45)38153501 
>> Office: A 4.23 
>> Email: pd.mes using cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd using gmail.com

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd.mes using cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd using gmail.com