[R] read.csv and field containing single quotes

[Rainer M Krug]

On 27/03/12 01:09, Benilton Carvalho wrote:
> I need to read in csv files, created by 3rd party, with fields
> containing single quotes (as shown below).
> 
> "header1","header2","header3","header4"
> "field1r1","field2r1","field3r1","field4r1"
> "field1r2","field2r2","field3r2PartA), field3r2PartB Very" Long","field4r2"
> "field1r3","field2r3","field3r3","field4r3"

You could try under your OS, to

1) replace ", with ', (assuming that the csv does not contain any'
2) read into R with sep="\'"

If the file is huge, some in OS solution would be the best.

Cheers,

Rainer


> 
> 
> read.csv(filename, quote="\"'", header=TRUE) won't read the file
> represented above, unless the 3rd line has Very""  (double quotes)
> instead of Very" (single quotes)... and this is documented (scan() man
> page).
> 
> Assuming that the creation of such csv files is something I'm not in a
> position to interfere with, are there (preferably, "all in R")
> suggestions on how to handle such task?
> 
> For the moment, I'm using my poor man's solution (below), but any
> tricks that would simplify this task would be great.
> 
> Thank you very much,
> 
> benilton
> 
> 
> parser <- function(fname, header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE){
>     txt <- readLines(fname)
>     txt <- gsub("^\"|\"$", "", txt)
>     txt <- strsplit(txt, "\",\"")
>     txt <- do.call(rbind, lapply(txt, function(x) gsub("\"", "\"\"", x)))
>     if (header){
>         nms <- txt[1,]
>         txt <- txt[-1,]
>     }
>     txt <- as.data.frame(txt, stringsAsFactors=stringsAsFactors)
>     if (header) names(txt) <- nms
>     txt
> }
> 
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-- 
Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)

Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Stellenbosch University
South Africa

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