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

[David Winsemius]

> On Jul 9, 2018, at 8:44 AM, Kevin Thorpe <kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca> wrote:
> 
> So, after I sent the initial email I quit that R session entirely. When I started it again to try an provide the example data, the original (that I had a problem with before) is now behaving itself. Grrr.
> 
> Now no one is going to believe I ever had a problem with the data. :-)

Your initial code looked flawed to me.

You were passing the result of write.csv (which returns NULL) to read.csv

Perhaps you modified your code and that's the reason it now succeeds.

Best,
David
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: R-help <r-help-bounces using r-project.org> on behalf of Kevin Thorpe <kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca>
> Sent: Monday, July 9, 2018 11:17 AM
> To: Eric Berger
> Cc: R Help Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [R] Using write.csv as a connection for read.csv
>   
> 
> Although your suggestion to provide the data is excellent and one I typically agree with, they data are currently unpublished and so should not be publicly available. I have tried to make a reproducible example in the past (when similar  looking things happened), but was unable to. Maybe I'll try a small subset and see if that works.
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Eric Berger <ericjberger using gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, July 9, 2018 10:51:38 AM
> To: Kevin Thorpe
> Cc: R Help Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [R] Using write.csv as a connection for read.csv
> 
> 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<mailto: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<mailto:kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca>  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.3016
> 
> 
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> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide  http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA

'Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.'   -Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law