[Rd] read.table fails with \246 separator (PR#3035)

[don at delphioutpost.com]

Full_Name: Don Allen
Version: 1.6.2
OS: Solaris
Submission from: (NULL) (140.186.148.11)


If you use '\246' to separate fields in a csv-like file, read.table fails if
you
have more than 5 lines in the file (in the following, the separators in junk.csv
are really '\246's, despite the way they printed):

Fails:


> read.table("/tmp/junk.csv",as.is=T,header=T,sep="\246")

Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = dec,  :

	line 5 did not have 5 elements

junk.csv
----------------
x¦a¦b¦c¦d
1¦7¦13¦19¦25
2¦8¦14¦20¦26
3¦9¦15¦21¦27
4¦10¦16¦22¦28
5¦11¦17¦23¦29
6¦12¦18¦24¦30
----------------

That works if you delete the last two lines:


> read.table("/tmp/junk.csv",as.is=T,header=T,sep="\246")

  x  a  b  c  d
1 1  7 13 19 25
2 2  8 14 20 26
3 3  9 15 21 27
4 4 10 16 22 28

When using tabs or vertical bars as separators, you do not encounter this
problem. The suspicion, of course, is that this has something to do with using a
separator
that has the high-order bit set (Insightful introduced just such a bug in Splus
6.1
that completely breaks their read.table for such separators).