[R] Using write.csv as a connection for read.csv

[Eric Berger]

Hi Kevin,
It's good that you provided the background to the problem.
Rather than asking this list to "debug" your proposed solution, I think you
would be better off showing some of the "corrupted" data frame and ask for
suggestions how to deal with it.
(Suggestions may or may not match your initial attempt.)
Can you output a piece of your suspect data frame via the dput() function
and post to the list?

Best,
Eric


On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 5:42 PM, Kevin Thorpe <kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca>
wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I have some data frames I created previously that seem to not be working
> correctly anymore. I *think* the problem is that some of the variables in
> the data frame are of a type called labelled. There are other attributes in
> the data frame as well. I thought that the easiest way to fix this was to
> convert to, say a csv and re-load.
>
> I tried something like read.csv(write.csv(df,row.names=FALSE)) but got
> the error
>
>   Error in read.table(file = file, header = header, sep = sep, quote =
> quote,  :
>   'file' must be a character string or connection
>
> I guess there must be a way to send the output of write.csv to a
> connection that read.csv can use but I was mystified by the help page on
> connections, at least I could not determine how to achieve my desired
> result.
>
> I realize I could write to a file and read it back in, but that feels
> klunky somehow. Maybe my approach to convert my data to strip the "weird"
> stuff is wrong-headed and I would accept alternative strategies.
>
> I would like a more general solution to fix this because I expect to
> encounter it some more. For those wondering how I found myself in such a
> mess, the data frames were initially imported from SAS data sets through
> the haven package. I then did some standard manipulation and added some
> additional labels with the upData() function from Hmisc (both packages have
> been updated since initial creation of the data frames).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin
>
> --
>  Kevin E. Thorpe
>  Head of Biostatistics,  Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC)
>  Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's
>  Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
>  University of Toronto
>  email: kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.3016
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using 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.
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]