R help - Apr 2010 - Import ASCII data using a .sas program

Good Day,

I have several ASCII data files that I would like to import into R.  
They all have a SAS import file which is used to bring the data into SAS 
and I am hoping to use this to bring the data into R.  There are lots of 
variables involved and the ASCII data file is 2308 columns long so I 
would certainly prefer to figure out a smart way of converting the data 
to R.

The ASCII data is a long stream of numbers (no field separators or 
delimiters) while the SAS import file looks like:

libname mine 'c:\';
data mine.fh4;
infile 'd:\fh4.txt' lrecl=2309;
input
    perstat1 $1-2
    linenum $3-4
    I_wave1 $5-5
    bnocost1 $6-10
    bnosta1 $11-12

So SAS uses the position of the ASCII character to determine what 
variable the data should be in while the SCAN or the READ. FWF function 
of R uses the width of the column.

Does anyway have a smart and/or automated way of moving my ASCII data 
into R using this .SAS program  ?

-- 
-Don 

Don Catanzaro, PhD                  
Landscape Ecologist
dgcatanzaro at gmail.com
16144 Sigmond Lane
Lowell, AR 72745
479-751-3616

Dear Don,

What read.fwf() needs are the field widths. I think that the following will
do what you want:
> strings <- scan(what="")
1:     perstat1 $1-2
3:     linenum $3-4
5:     I_wave1 $5-5
7:     bnocost1 $6-10
9:     bnosta1 $11-12
11:     
Read 10 items
> (fields <- matrix(as.numeric(unlist(strsplit(
+     gsub("\\$", "", grep("^\\$", strings,
value=TRUE)), "-"))),
+     ncol=2, byrow=TRUE))
     [,1] [,2]
[1,]    1    2
[2,]    3    4
[3,]    5    5
[4,]    6   10
[5,]   11   12
 
> (widths <- fields[,2] - fields[,1] + 1)
[1] 2 2 1 5 2

I hope this helps,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Senator William McMaster 
  Professor of Social Statistics
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at
r-project.org]
On
> Behalf Of Donald Catanzaro, PhD
> Sent: April-14-10 1:02 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Import ASCII data using a .sas program
> 
> Good Day,
> 
> I have several ASCII data files that I would like to import into R.
> They all have a SAS import file which is used to bring the data into SAS
> and I am hoping to use this to bring the data into R.  There are lots of
> variables involved and the ASCII data file is 2308 columns long so I
> would certainly prefer to figure out a smart way of converting the data
> to R.
> 
> The ASCII data is a long stream of numbers (no field separators or
> delimiters) while the SAS import file looks like:
> 
> libname mine 'c:\';
> data mine.fh4;
> infile 'd:\fh4.txt' lrecl=2309;
> input
>     perstat1 $1-2
>     linenum $3-4
>     I_wave1 $5-5
>     bnocost1 $6-10
>     bnosta1 $11-12
> 
> So SAS uses the position of the ASCII character to determine what
> variable the data should be in while the SCAN or the READ. FWF function
> of R uses the width of the column.
> 
> Does anyway have a smart and/or automated way of moving my ASCII data
> into R using this .SAS program  ?
> 
> --
> -Don
> 
> Don Catanzaro, PhD
> Landscape Ecologist
> dgcatanzaro at gmail.com
> 16144 Sigmond Lane
> Lowell, AR 72745
> 479-751-3616
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at 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
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Hi Don, 

Sorry that this may be too late for what you were working on, but wanted to
reply just in case you have to tackle this in the future..   :)

library(SAScii)

x <- read.SAScii( "d:/fh4.txt" , "d:/sas input
script.sas" )

Anthony

--
View this message in context:
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Re-Import-ASCII-data-using-a-sas-program-tp1840159p4636126.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.