[R] Reading word by word in a dataset

[Liaw, Andy]

Don't give up on read.table() just yet:

> read.table("clipboard", colClasses=c("character", "NULL", "NULL"),
fill=TRUE)
             V1
1      i1-apple
2     i2-banana
3 i3-strawberry

Andy

> From: Spencer Graves
> 
>       Uwe and Andy's solutions are great for many 
> applications but won't 
> work if not all rows have the same numbers of fields.  Consider for 
> example the following modification of Lee's example: 
> 
> i1-apple        10$   New_York
> i2-banana
> i3-strawberry   7$    Japan
> 
>       If I copy this to "clipboard" and run Andy's code, I get the 
> following: 
> 
>  > read.table("clipboard", colClasses=c("character", "NULL", "NULL"))
> Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = 
> quote, dec = 
> dec,  :
>     line 2 did not have 3 elements
> 
>       We can get around this using "scan", then splitting 
> things apart 
> similar to the way Uwe described: 
> 
>  > dat <-
> + scan("clipboard", character(0), sep="\n")
> Read 3 items
>  > dash <- regexpr("-", dat)
>  > dat2 <- substring(dat, pmax(0, dash)+1)
>  >
>  > blank <- regexpr(" ", dat2)
>  > if(any(blank<0))
> +   blank[blank<0] <- nchar(dat2[blank<0])
>  > substring(dat2, 1, blank)
> [1] "apple "      "banana"      "strawberry "
> 
>       hope this helps.  spencer graves
>     
> Uwe Ligges wrote:
> 
> > Liaw, Andy wrote:
> >
> >> Using R-2.0.0 on WinXPPro, cut-and-pasting the data you have:
> >>
> >>
> >>> read.table("clipboard", colClasses=c("character", "NULL", "NULL"))
> >>
> >>
> >>              V1
> >> 1      i1-apple
> >> 2     i2-banana
> >> 3 i3-strawberry
> >
> >
> >
> > ... and if only the words after "-" are of interest, the 
> statement can 
> > be followed by
> >
> >  sapply(strsplit(...., "-"), "[", 2)
> >
> >
> > Uwe Ligges
> >
> >
> >
> >> HTH,
> >> Andy
> >>
> >>
> >>> From: j lee
> >>>
> >>> Hello All,
> >>>
> >>> I'd like to read first words in lines into a new file.
> >>> If I have a data file the following, how can I get the
> >>> first words: apple, banana, strawberry?
> >>>
> >>> i1-apple        10$   New_York
> >>> i2-banana       5$    London
> >>> i3-strawberry   7$    Japan
> >>>
> >>> Is there any similar question already posted to the
> >>> list? I am a bit new to R, having a few months of
> >>> experience now.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>>
> >>> John
> >>>
> >>> ______________________________________________
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> >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> >>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide! 
> > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> 
> 
> -- 
> Spencer Graves, PhD, Senior Development Engineer
> O:  (408)938-4420;  mobile:  (408)655-4567
> 
> ______________________________________________
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>