R help - Mar 2004 - reading short int and float from binary connection

Hi,
I have a binary file with mixture of short integers (2 bytes) and floats 
(4 bytes).
To get the data into R I use readBin reading each value one at a time 
(n=1) but it is giving me headaches, two questions:
-In the "what" option is there any difference between
"integer" and "int"?
-To read the short int I use what="int" and size=2 and to read the 
floats I use what="double" and size=4, the strange thing is that 
sometimes it works but other times it reads wrong values.
Any clues where my mistake might be?
Thanks
Angel

Angel Lopez wrote:
> Hi,
> I have a binary file with mixture of short integers (2 bytes) and floats 
> (4 bytes).
> To get the data into R I use readBin reading each value one at a time 
> (n=1) but it is giving me headaches, two questions:
> -In the "what" option is there any difference between
"integer" and "int"?
> -To read the short int I use what="int" and size=2 and to read
the
> floats I use what="double" and size=4, the strange thing is that 
> sometimes it works but other times it reads wrong values.
> Any clues where my mistake might be?
> Thanks
> Angel

Are the inetgers signed or not? You might want to set signed = FALSE for 
unsigned integers.
Are you sure you are reading each time from the beginning of the connection?
Are you really sure about the file format specifications?

Difficult to track down without your code, the file format's 
specification, and an example file..

Uwe Ligges