[R] Trouble pulling data from a messy ASCII file...

[Titan8883]

The output I would be looking for would be one row for each data file with
columns for each variable, so using a .csv example with a few variables
would be:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
File_name,date_written,program_ver,data_file_ver,bin_width
20080911.013115.007.17.txt, 20081121.145730,3.7,3.6,7.5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
My plan is to create a table with all the data files listed. This would
allow me to find mean/min/max values for different variables,sort by a
certain variable, etc. I am not limiting myself to R, I have seen awk
mentioned before, so that sounds like it is worth looking at to prep the
data.

Hope that helps.





jholtman wrote:
> 
> It would be helpful if you could show what the output would be for the
> example given.  Exactly what are 'values' and what would be the
> 'headings'.  As mentioned before, you can use readLines and then parse
> the data you want, but something like Perl might be easier, but it is
> hard to tell from the mail.
> 
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Titan8883 <jplaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am a new graduate student who is also new to R. I am ok with the
>> basics,
>> but the problem I am having right now seems beyond what I can do..so I am
>> looking for advice. I am trying to pull data from flat ASCII files, but
>> they
>> do not have a "nice" structure so a simple "read.table" doesn't work. An
>> example first half of a data file is below:
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 19 c:/data/WF-100/2008/20080911/trk/20080911.013115.007.17.txt
>> 10 s   name of program that wrote this file trkplt   name of program that
>> wrote this file
>> 10 GORDON   machine that generated this file   machine that generated
>> this
>> file
>> 10     3.7 version of program
>> 10     3.6 version of this data file
>> 10    5.81 version of Universal Library
>> 10 20081121.145730 when this file was written
>> 10 Windows_XP   operating system used   operating system used
>> *
>> *       radar characteristics
>> 11 WF-100
>> 11 20000000  A/D rate, samples/second
>> 11 7.5  bin width, m
>> 11 800  nominal PRF, Hz
>> 11  0.25  nominal pulse width, microsec
>> 11 0  tuning, volts
>> 11 3.19779  nominal wave length, cm
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ..the file goes on from there...
>>
>> How would I go about getting this data into some kind of useful format?
>> This
>> is one of about 1000 files I will need to go through. I would ideally
>> like
>> to get these into a format with each data file as a row with columns for
>> the
>> various values with the description text removed(version of program, file
>> version, tuning volts, etc...).
>>
>> I'm not looking for a cut and paste answer, but perhaps some direction on
>> where I should start. I have only done basic .csv, table, and line inputs
>> up
>> until now.
>>
>> Thanks for any advice
>> --
>> View this message in context:
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>> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jim Holtman
> Cincinnati, OH
> +1 513 646 9390
> 
> What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> 

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