[R] Unusual separators

[peter dalgaard]

On Aug 17, 2011, at 05:57 , Jim Holtman wrote:

> just read in the file using the tab as the separator.  if this is a problem because a tab might appear by itself, then use readLines to read in the file, gsub to replace the blank/tab with a new separator, writeLines to write out to a temporary and then read in from the temporary file.

You can skip the write and read back step by reading from a text connection. In R 2.14-to-be, there's a text= argument to read.table (and scan too), so you'll be able to do the whole thing on the fly: 

read.table(.... text=gsub(readLines(.....)....))


> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Aug 16, 2011, at 11:02, Matt Curcio <matt.curcio.ri at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> I have a list that I got from a web page that I would like to crunch.
>> Unfortunately, the list has some unusual separators in it.  I believe
>> the columns are separated by 1 space and 1 tab.  I tried to insert
>> this into the read.table( ..., sep=" \t", ...) but got an error that
>> said something like 'only one byte separators can be used.
>> I have thought about using a gsub to 'swap out' the "space + tab" and
>> replace it with commas, etc but thought there might be another way.
>> Any suggestions?
>> M
>> -- 
>> 
>> 
>> Matt Curcio
>> M: 401-316-5358
>> E: matt.curcio.ri at gmail.com
>> 
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
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Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
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