[R] Errors in reading in txt files

[Ista Zahn]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 1:58 PM, Berend Hasselman <bhh at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>> On 14 Dec 2017, at 19:36, lily li <chocold12 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi R users,
>>
>> I have a question about reading from text files. The file has the structure
>> below:
>>
>> Time                            Column1   Column2
>> 01.01.2001-12:00:00
>
> This line does not contain 3 elements; only one.
> You'll have to fix that line. Delete it, prepend it with a comment character of add enough columns.

I definitely don't recommend that. Instead, read

?read.table

to learn about the "fill" and "header" arguments.

df = read.table("DATAM", header = TRUE, fill = TRUE)

will probably work.

Best,
Ista


>
>
> Berend
>
>> 01.01.2001-24:00:00        12             11
>> 01.02.2001-12:00:00        13             10
>> 01.02.2001-24:00:00        11             12
>> 01.03.2001-12:00:00        15             11
>> 01.03.2001-24:00:00        16             10
>> ...
>>
>> I just use the simple script to open it: df = read.table('DATAM', head=T).
>>
>> But it has the error and thus cannot read the file:
>> Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec =
>> dec,  :
>>  line 1 did not have 3 elements
>>
>> How to read it with three fixed columns, and how to read the time format in
>> the first column correctly? Thanks for your help.
>>
>>       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.