R help - Mar 2007 - reading a text file with a stray carriage return

Hi,
   I'm  hoping someone has a suggestion for handling a simple problem.  A
   client  gave  me a comma separated value file (call it x.csv) that has
   an  id  and name and address for about 25,000 people (25,000 records).
   I used read.table to read it, but then discovered that there are stray
   carriage returns on several records.  This plays havoc with read.table
   since it starts a new input line when it sees the carriage return.  In
   short, the read is all wrong.
   I thought I could write a simple function to parse a line and write it
   back  out,  character by character.  If a carriage return is found, it
   would  simply  be  ignored on the writing back out part.  But how do I
   identify a carriage return?  What is the code or symbol?  Is there any
   easier  way  to  rid the file of carriage returns in the middle of the
   input lines?
   Any help is appreciated.
   Walt Paczkowski

   _________________________________
   Walter R. Paczkowski, Ph.D.
   Data Analytics Corp.
   44 Hamilton Lane
   Plainsboro, NJ  08536
   (V) 609-936-8999
   (F) 609-936-3733

How do you define a carriage return in the middle of a line if a carriage
return is also used to delimit a line?  One of the things you can do is to
use 'count.fields' to determine the number of fields in each line.  For
those lines that are not the right length, you could combine them together
with a 'paste' command when you write them out.

On 3/7/07, Walter R. Paczkowski <dataanalytics@earthlink.net>
wrote:
>
>
>   Hi,
>   I'm  hoping someone has a suggestion for handling a simple problem. 
A
>   client  gave  me a comma separated value file (call it x.csv) that has
>   an  id  and name and address for about 25,000 people (25,000 records).
>   I used read.table to read it, but then discovered that there are stray
>   carriage returns on several records.  This plays havoc with read.table
>   since it starts a new input line when it sees the carriage return.  In
>   short, the read is all wrong.
>   I thought I could write a simple function to parse a line and write it
>   back  out,  character by character.  If a carriage return is found, it
>   would  simply  be  ignored on the writing back out part.  But how do I
>   identify a carriage return?  What is the code or symbol?  Is there any
>   easier  way  to  rid the file of carriage returns in the middle of the
>   input lines?
>   Any help is appreciated.
>   Walt Paczkowski
>
>   _________________________________
>   Walter R. Paczkowski, Ph.D.
>   Data Analytics Corp.
>   44 Hamilton Lane
>   Plainsboro, NJ  08536
>   (V) 609-936-8999
>   (F) 609-936-3733
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> 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.
>


-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

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