Hi, I just start to use R today! I am reading the R Help on read.csv and the description for header says "header is set to TRUE if and only if the first row contains one fewer field than the number of columns". Why is that? My data has the same number of fields in the first row as the number of columns. I mean I have no problem opening my csv file I am just curious why it should be one fewer. Thanks! -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Header-T-tp4097045p4097045.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
a b A 1 2 B 3 4 C 5 6 The assumption above is that the rownames don't have a header and the columns do. Therefore the default is header=TRUE. r a b A 1 2 B 3 4 C 5 6 In the second example, the first column is called "r" and it is not clear whether that is a column with a variable or a rowname. Therefore the default is header=FALSE. On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:47 PM, lucky7 <wokeliandehotmail@gmail.com> wrote:> Hi, > > I just start to use R today! I am reading the R Help on read.csv and the > description for header says "header is set to TRUE if and only if the first > row contains one fewer field than the number of columns". Why is that? My > data has the same number of fields in the first row as the number of > columns. I mean I have no problem opening my csv file I am just curious why > it should be one fewer. > > Thanks! > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Header-T-tp4097045p4097045.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html<http://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On 11/23/2011 06:47 AM, lucky7 wrote:> Hi, > > I just start to use R today! I am reading the R Help on read.csv and the > description for header says "header is set to TRUE if and only if the first > row contains one fewer field than the number of columns". Why is that? My > data has the same number of fields in the first row as the number of > columns. I mean I have no problem opening my csv file I am just curious why > it should be one fewer. >Hi lucky7, This looks like one of those little obscurities that sometimes appear in the help files. The default for read.csv is header=TRUE and I guess that the "...header is set to TRUE..." part means that if your file has one less field in the first line, header will be forced to TRUE as this is a part of the CSV specification. As Douglas Adams might have said, "Don't panic." Jim