[R] Reading text file with fortran format

[Steven Yen]

Hello

I read data with fortran format:
mydata<-read.fortran('foo.txt',
                      c("4F10.4","F8.3","3F3.0","20F2.0"))
colnames(mydata)<-c("q1","q2","q3","q4","income","hhsize",
  "weekend","dietk","quart1","quart2","quart3","male","age35",
  "age50","age65","midwest","south","west","nonmetro",
  "suburb","black","asian","other","hispan","hhtype1",
  "hhtype2","hhtype3","emp_stat")
dstat(mydata,digits=6)

I produced the following sample statistics for the first 4
variables (q1,q2,q3,q4):

              Mean  Std.dev Min       Max  Obs
q1       0.000923 0.002509   0  0.035245 5649
q2       0.000698 0.001681   0  0.038330 5649
q3       0.000766 0.002138   0  0.040100 5649
q4       0.000373 0.001140   0  0.026374 5649

The correct sample statistics are:
Variable|       Mean       Std.Dev.     Minimum      Maximum
--------+----------------------------------------------------
       Q1|     9.227632     25.09311          0.0     352.4508
       Q2|     6.983078     16.80984          0.0     383.2995
       Q3|     7.657381     21.38337          0.0     400.9950
       Q4|     3.727952     11.40446          0.0     263.7398
   INCOME|     16.01603     13.70296          0.0        100.0
   HHSIZE|     2.586475     1.464282          1.0         16.0

In other words, values for q1-q4 were scaled down by a factor of 10,000.
My raw data look like (with proper format)

     0.0000    0.0000    0.0000    0.0000  48.108...
     0.0000    0.0000    0.0000    0.0000  11.640...
    35.3450    0.0000   95.7656    0.0000   4.667...
     0.0000    0.0000    0.0000    0.0000   9.000...
    84.0000    4.8038    0.0000    3.1886   2.923...
     0.0000    0.0000    0.0000    1.1636  10.000...
     0.0000   10.7818  109.7884    0.0000  17.000...
     0.0000    7.9528    0.0000    4.7829  35.000...

True that the data here are space delimited. But I need to read data 
elsewhere where data are not space delimited.

Any idea/suggestion would be appreciated.


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