R devel - Jul 2004 - read.table, read.fwf, and na.strings (PR#7083)

I am pleased to report that R already has the answer to my request in
the 
   strip.white=TRUE,
argument.   With this argument
tmp3 <- read.fwf("temp.dat",
                 na.strings="-999",
                 strip.white=TRUE,
                 col.names=LETTERS[1:4],
                 widths=c(2,4,5,5))
tmp3
behaves exactly like I want it to behave.

Please add it explicitly to the documentation for read.fwf and all will be well.
Currently it is there only by indirect reference to read.table.

Rich