R devel - Feb 2007 - newline with cell of Excel worksheet created with write.xls

As part of my project to put different types of results into worksheets, 
I would like to be able to put an auto-generated methods section. If I 
compose in RWinEdt, read into R, and use write.table with a .txt file 
extension, what I get out has line-breaks that correspond to those I put 
in in the first place.

If I do the same thing but write.xls with .xls extention, I get an Excel 
  worksheet with the entire paragraph on one line (row). It seems to me 
that Excel uses a special character for new-lines (new-rows). Is there a 
way that write.xls could convert \n to this special character?

I'm  writing lots of posts on this, but trying to break up the subjects 
to create better threads.

Mark

-- 
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

Hi Mark,

You need a character vector or a data.frame for separate rows. Something like:

longtext <- 'akdf kadf? \nkad flkd?flkadfk dafk \nlakdf
kdjfkjdfkjadfk\njadfkjdflk adf'
(rowtext <- as.data.frame( strsplit( longtext, split = "\n" )) )

may do this.

Regards,
Hans-Peter


PS: Probably not so appropriate for the R-devel list either...


2007/2/9, Mark W Kimpel <mwkimpel at gmail.com>:
> As part of my project to put different types of results into worksheets,
> I would like to be able to put an auto-generated methods section. If I
> compose in RWinEdt, read into R, and use write.table with a .txt file
> extension, what I get out has line-breaks that correspond to those I put
> in in the first place.
>
> If I do the same thing but write.xls with .xls extention, I get an Excel
>   worksheet with the entire paragraph on one line (row). It seems to me
> that Excel uses a special character for new-lines (new-rows). Is there a
> way that write.xls could convert \n to this special character?
>
> I'm  writing lots of posts on this, but trying to break up the subjects
> to create better threads.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Mark W. Kimpel MD
> Neuroinformatics
> Department of Psychiatry
> Indiana University School of Medicine
>