R help - Apr 2001 - "all rows must have the same length" error while using read.table

>     I tried to read the table bellow (table goes on with 54 rows) with 
> the read.table
...
>   
> What "length" is the error message referring to? 
The number of columns in each row.  Apparently, it was different in
at least two rows.

Possible causes:
1)  repeated tabs, when there should've been one only.  From the 
format of the data you provided, this looks possible.  With \t 
representing a tab, R will interpret "3\t\t7" as a 3, two 
separators, with a non-value between them (NA), and a 7 rather 
than 3, separator, 7.  If you're comfortable with vi, you can find 
these in your file by ":s/\t\t" (without the quotes, of course).  
grep gets confused on my system between \t being a "t" and 
a tab.  If you're certain that there are no deliberately blank
entries (check this!), you can remove repeated tabs inside vi with
:1,$s,\t\t*,\t,g


2) trailing tabs.  Again, from within vi, you can clean these
up by 
:1,$s,[\t ]*,,  
which clears trailing spaces and tabs.

I usually leave a few perl, awk, or sed scripts lying around 
just for such tidy-ups (plus empty lines, leading spaces, and 
other annoyances).  Keeps me from having to remember all the
things that have bitten me before.

Cheers

Jason
-- 
Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd.
64-21-343-545
jasont at indigoindustrial.co.nz
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Hi-

    I tried to read the table bellow (table goes on with 54 rows) with 
the read.table

      
> AGE    MONTH    SEX    HEADLEN    HEADWTH    NECK    LENGTH    CHEST 
>    WEIGHT
> 19            7                1            11.0                5.5    
>             16.0            53.0            26.0            80
> 55            7                1            16.5                9.0    
>             28.8            67.5            45.0            344
> 81            9                1            15.5                8.0    
>             31.0            72.0            54.0            416
> 115          7                1            17.0                10.0    
>           31.5            72.0            49.0            348
> 104          8                2            15.5                6.5    
>             22.0            62.0            35.0            166


  

   > set3 <- read.table("/dos/mydocu~1/conjun~1.txt", header=T, 
sep="\t", row.names=1)

R (1.2.2 under Linux) produced the following error message:

   Error in  read.table("/dos/mydocu~1/conjun~1.txt", header=T,
sep="\t", :
       all rows must have the same length.
  
What "length" is the error message referring to? The names of the
variables?
Thanks in advance.


Regards,

   Henry



  


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