[R] RE: packaged datasets in .csv format (David Firth)

[Andreas Christmann]

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 10:53:27 +0100
> From: David Firth <david.firth at nuffield.oxford.ac.uk>
> Subject: [R] packaged datasets in .csv format
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Message-ID:
> 	<307D34CE-B1F3-11D7-A8D2-0050E4C03977 at nuffield.oxford.ac.uk>
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> 
> A couple of questions in connection with using .csv format to include 
> data in a package:
> 
> First, the background.  The data() function loads data from .csv 
> ("comma-separated values") files using
> 
>    read.table(..., header = TRUE, sep = ";")
> 
> But ?read.table says
> 
>       ## To write a CSV file for input to Excel one might use
>       write.table(x, file = "foo.csv", sep = ",", col.names = NA)
>       ## and to read this file back into R one needs
>       read.table("file.csv", header = TRUE, sep = ",", row.names=1)
> 
> As a result, .csv files created by write.table() as above are not read 
> in by data() in the way that might be expected [that is, expected by 
> someone who had not read help(data)!]
> 
> Two questions, then:
> -- is there some compelling reason for  the use of `sep = ";"' in place 
> of `sep = ",", row.names=1'?

I prefer ";" instead of "," , because in text variables there are often 
",".


> -- if I want to maintain a dataset in .csv format, for use both in R 
> and in other systems such as Excel, SPSS, etc, what is the best way to 
> go about it?

Depends. Perhaps it is best to check it out for the software packages
and the versions of the software packages you are using.

Andreas Christmann

> 
> Any advice would be much appreciated.
> 
> Cheers,
> David