[R] Novice question about getting data into R

[Tom Backer Johnsen]

Silvia Lomascolo wrote:
> 
>> refdata =
>> read.table("K:\\MerchantData\\RiskModel\\refund_distribution.csv", header
>> = TRUE)
> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings, 
> : 
>   line 1 did not have 42 elements
>> refdata =
>> read.table("K:\\MerchantData\\RiskModel\\refund_distribution.csv")
> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings, 
> : 
>   line 2 did not have 42 elements
> R interprets that you have 42 columns from the variable names. Do you? See
> if removing spaces between column names helps (e.g., "week.1" instead of
> "week 1").  Also, because yours is a csv file, fields are separated by
> comas.  You can either use the "read.csv" command instead of the
> "read.table" (see ?read.table for details), or add the argument sep="," to
> tell R that fields are separated by comas.  You might also need to specify,
> if you have empty cells, what to do with them (e.g., na.strings="")

You are of course right about the NA's (missing values, empty cells) as 
well as the possible blanks in the column names.  It might nevertheless 
be a good idea for him to at least submit a few of the lines at the top 
of the file.  A .csv file as generated by Excel on Windows is not 
necessarily comma-separated.  That depends on the "list separator" 
setting under "Regional Language Settings" found in the Control Panel. 
On my machine, the list separator is a semicolon for a .csv file.  The 
reason is simple, in Norway, the standard decimal separator is a comma, 
and you do not want to confuse the system too much.  So, that particular 
point is dependent on the settisngs for his locale (language, country).

Tom
> 
> 
> 
> 


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| Tom Backer Johnsen, Psychometrics Unit,  Faculty of Psychology |
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