R devel - Jun 2006 - separators in data()

just out of curiosity:

  why is the default behavior in data() for reading in .csv files
to use sep=";" (semicolon rather than comma)?  is this a historical
artifact of some sort, or is there other logic to it?  It caught
me by surprise since I was expecting it to be sep="," as in
read.csv() ...

  cheers
    Ben Bolker

-- 
620B Bartram Hall                            bolker at zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida    http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
Box 118525                                   (ph)  352-392-5697
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Ben,

you confused read.csv and read.csv2. Separator in read.csv is ",",
while
it is ";" in read.csv2. This is due to use of different decimal
symbols
in some european languages - mine is one of them  and I really hate
this. So the situation is:

                      decimal separator
english               .       ,
some european lang.   ,       ;

There is then of course also a need to handle decimal separator and this
is done in read.csv2.
>   just out of curiosity:
> 
>   why is the default behavior in data() for reading in .csv files
> to use sep=";" (semicolon rather than comma)?  is this a
historical
> artifact of some sort, or is there other logic to it?  It caught
> me by surprise since I was expecting it to be sep="," as in
> read.csv() ...
> 
>   cheers
>     Ben Bolker

-- 
Lep pozdrav / With regards,
    Gregor Gorjanc

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