[R] Fw: Re: Is there anything like a write.fwf() or possibility to print adata.frame without rownames?

[Gorjanc Gregor]

> Hi
>
> can you please explain why do you need it? What do you want to do with the exported file?
> 
> I wonder what type of software can not accept any reasonable delimiter and requires fwf files.
>
> The only workaround I can imagine is to transfer all columns to character and add leading spaces to each item which is > shorter than longest item in specified column to equalize length of all items in column and then use  
> 
> write.table( tab, "file.txt", sep=" ", row.names=F)
> 
> as suggested.
>
> But I still wonder why?

OK, I did not want to be to specific, but here it goes. I am using some 
"special" software for variance component estimation and prediction in
genetics. Programs are VCE and PEST (http://w3.tzv.fal.de/%7Eeg/) and
they both read data in FW (fixed width) format. For those programs
you can only give data in such format and it is really tedious to do so,
but that is the way it is. 

>
> If you used e.g.
> write.table( tab, "file.xls", sep="\t", row.names=F)
>
> you can open it directly by spreadsheet program just by clickung on it and everything shall be properly aligned.
>

I am fully aware of this, but I do need FW format. I will try with sprintf(), but
this looks very though for me.

> >>Petr Pikal wrote:
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> did you tried something like
> >>>
> >>> write.table( tab, "file.txt", sep="\t", row.names=F)
> >>>
> >>> which writes to tab separated file?
> >>>
> >>
> >>Petr thanks, but I do not want a tab delimited file. I need spaces
> >>between columns.
> >
> > write.table( tab, "file.txt", sep="", row.names=F)
> > Can it do what you want?
> 
> Ronggui thanks,
> 
> but this does not work also. For example I get something like
> this bellow
> 
> "26" "1" 42 "DA" "DA" "lipa" "Monika"
> "26" "1" 42 "DA" "DA" "lipa" "Monika"
> "27" "1" 41 "DA" "DA" "smreka" "Monika"
> "27" "1" 41 "DA" "DA" "smreka" "Monika"
> 
> and you can see, that there is a problem, when all "values"
> in a column do not have the same length. I need to get
> 
> "26" "1" 42 "DA" "DA" "lipa"   "Monika"
> "26" "1" 42 "DA" "DA" "lipa"   "Monika"
> "27" "1" 41 "DA" "DA" "smreka" "Monika"
> "27" "1" 41 "DA" "DA" "smreka" "Monika"
> 
> i.e. columns should be properly aligned.
> 
> Lep pozdrav / With regards,
>     Gregor Gorjanc
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> University of Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty        URI:
> http://www.bfro.uni-lj.si/MR/ggorjan Zootechnical Department     mail:
> gregor.gorjanc <at> bfro.uni-lj.si Groblje 3                   tel:
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> 888 Slovenia, Europe
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Petr Pikal
petr.pikal at precheza.cz