[R] data file with columns of unequal length

[Peter Dalgaard]

William Simpson wrote:
>> As I understand it, they don't come in pairs anyway.
> Correct.
> 
>> For the same reason
>> a data frame is just the wrong kind of data structure. If you don't want
>> separate data files, you can use one file with two columns where the
>> second column is (say) 1 for the x and 2 for the y.
> Could you explain this further? I don't really get it.
> My xs and ys have different lengths. How would I read them in?

Same format as when you have data from two different groups. Don't
really know how to make it clearer than that. Like the "sleep" dataset
(OK, so they are actually paired...).

> 
> Ideally I would just read in the x column and y columns separately
> 
> x<-read.file("file.dat", column1)
> y<-read.file("file.dat", column2)
> But I know of no way to do that...
> 
> [Oh, by the way, I never mentioned this, the x and ys are event times
> and are in ascending order (by time of occurrence).]
> 
>> (There are other options, like concatenating the x and the y with some
>> sort of separator inbetween, but it easily gets painful to read them
>> back in.)

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