R help - Feb 2009 - How to parse text file into a table?

I am given a text file of records to be converted into a table format.
I have searched related topics or packages, but can't find any similar
cases. Please help.

Sample record is given below. Take note the last element doesn't have
a semi colon.

###---------Start of record----------------------

Name : John
Height: 170cm
Weight  : 70kg
Age: 30

Status: Married
Children: 2

Employment  Engineer

###---------End of record-----------------------

Table format should have this header
Name	Height	Weight	Age	Status	Children	Employment

Daren Tan <darentan76 <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> I am given a text file of records to be converted into a table format.
> I have searched related topics or packages, but can't find any similar
> cases. Please help.
> 
> Sample record is given below. Take note the last element doesn't have
> a semi colon.
> 
> ###---------Start of record----------------------
> 
> Name : John
> Height: 170cm
> Weight  : 70kg
> Age: 30
> 
> Status: Married
> Children: 2
> 
> Employment  Engineer
> 
> ###---------End of record-----------------------
> 
> Table format should have this header
> Name	Height	Weight	Age	Status	Children	Employment

  You can put something together with
readLines, grep (to find the appropriate lines),
gsub (to strip off the first field) ... if you need
an explicit example, ask again ...

  Ben Bolker

Here is one way of reading in your data:
> input <- readLines(textConnection("###---------Start of
record----------------------
+
+ Name: John
+ Height: 170cm
+ Weight: 70kg
+ Age: 30
+
+ Status: Married
+ Children: 2
+
+ Employment:  Engineer
+
+ ###---------End of
record-----------------------"))
> closeAllConnections()
> result <- list()
> recordNo <- 1
> for (i in input){
+     if (nchar(i) == 0) next
+     if (length(grep("Start of record", i)) != 0){
+         # initialize next element of the list
+         result[[recordNo]] <- c(Name=NA, Height=NA, Weight=NA,
+             Age=NA, Status=NA, Children=NA)
+
+     }
+     else if (length(grep("End of record", i)) != 0) recordNo <-
recordNo + 1
+     else {
+         # follow assumes you have consistent naming with ":"
terminating data
+         # if not, add some error checking code
+         name <- sub("^(.*):.*", "\\1", i)
+         value <- sub(".*:\\s*(.*)", "\\1", i)
+         result[[recordNo]][name] <- value
+     }
+ }
>
> result
[[1]]
      Name     Height     Weight        Age     Status   Children Employment
    "John"    "170cm"     "70kg"      
"30"  "Married"        "2" "Engineer"
>

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Daren Tan <darentan76 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I am given a text file of records to be converted into a table format.
> I have searched related topics or packages, but can't find any similar
> cases. Please help.
>
> Sample record is given below. Take note the last element doesn't have
> a semi colon.
>
> ###---------Start of record----------------------
>
> Name : John
> Height: 170cm
> Weight  : 70kg
> Age: 30
>
> Status: Married
> Children: 2
>
> Employment  Engineer
>
> ###---------End of record-----------------------
>
> Table format should have this header
> Name    Height  Weight  Age     Status  Children        Employment
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>


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

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?