R help - Oct 2005 - R data import

Hello,

I hope all is well. I've gone through and searched just about all the 
manuals, faqs, contribs available on the data import/export process and 
have not found any answer to a specific question. Hopefully, I will be 
able to fall back upon the valuable expertise in mailing list. Here goes:

How can I import SPECIFIC columns of data in a fixed width file? E.g. I 
have a fwf with 40 variables ranging from 1 to 10 characters and at any 
given time, need only a few to analyze, like so:
 <age: 2 char ><sex: 1 char><morning: 1 char><location: 3 
char>......<family: 9 char><tagged: date>.......<weight at
capture: 4
char><length at capture: 7 char>etc.
which looks something like:
02M1LOS...xxcanidae011289.....10001291412


In essence I am looking for functionality similar to the SAS 
pointer/informat method. I would appreciate any help anyone would be 
able to give!

Thanks so much for your help.

best,
Ratnendra Sharma
U Minn

A few suggestions:
- read.fwf function sounds like what you need, but I have never used it so I
am not sure
- use readLines and manually extract needed positions and convert them to
numbers 

 Jarek 
====================================================\==== 
 Jarek Tuszynski, PhD.                           o / \ 
 Science Applications International Corporation  <\__,|  
 (703) 676-4192                                   ">  \ 
 Jaroslaw.W.Tuszynski at saic.com                     `   \ 



-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 7:52 PM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] R data import

Hello,

I hope all is well. I've gone through and searched just about all the
manuals, faqs, contribs available on the data import/export process and have
not found any answer to a specific question. Hopefully, I will be able to
fall back upon the valuable expertise in mailing list. Here goes:

How can I import SPECIFIC columns of data in a fixed width file? E.g. I have
a fwf with 40 variables ranging from 1 to 10 characters and at any given
time, need only a few to analyze, like so:
 <age: 2 char ><sex: 1 char><morning: 1 char><location: 3 
char>......<family: 9 char><tagged: date>.......<weight at
capture: 4
char><length at capture: 7 char>etc.
which looks something like:
02M1LOS...xxcanidae011289.....10001291412


In essence I am looking for functionality similar to the SAS
pointer/informat method. I would appreciate any help anyone would be able to
give!

Thanks so much for your help.

best,
Ratnendra Sharma
U Minn

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