[Rd] Bug in read.table?

[Ben Bolker]

Ben Bolker <bbolker <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
>

   Can simplify this still farther:

a b'c
d e'f
g h'i


>  One of the first things that happens in read.table is that
> the first few lines are read with readTableHead:
> 
>   lines <- .Internal(readTableHead(file, nlines, comment.char, 
>        blank.lines.skip, quote, sep))
> 
  in this case, this reads the first two lines as one line;
the single quote at pos. 4 of the first line closes on pos.
4 of the second line, preventing the first new line from
ending a line.

  R then pushes back two copies of the lines that have
been read (this is normal behavior; I don't quite follow the
logic).
 
  The rest of the file is read with scan(), 1 line at a time.
However, there is the discrepancy between the way
that readTableHead interprets new lines in the middle of
quoted strings (it ignores them) and the way that scan()
interprets them (it takes them as the end of the quoted string).