R help - Feb 2007 - reading text file not table

Hello all,

I'm looking for a way to be able to read a text file into R. It's a csv
file but when I do
"txt <-read.table("F00.csv", header=T,
sep=",")" It doesn't read the
file properly, and I only get 2 columns. If I open it up in OOc or Excel
it open right with 7 columns.
What I would really like to do is read the file as text and then split
it and read the bottom section where the 7 columns are. Then I would
re-read the table with read.table.

    Thank you for any help,

    Paul

-- 
Research Technician
Mass Spectrometry
   o The
  /
o Scripps
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   o Research
  /
o Institute

On 17-Feb-07 H. Paul Benton wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm looking for a way to be able to read a text file into R.
> It's a csv file but when I do
> "txt <-read.table("F00.csv", header=T,
sep=",")"
> It doesn't read the file properly, and I only get 2 columns.
> If I open it up in OOc or Excel it open right with 7 columns.
> What I would really like to do is read the file as text and
> then split it and read the bottom section where the 7 columns are.
> Then I would re-read the table with read.table.
> 
>     Thank you for any help,
> 
>     Paul
What's wrong with using read.csv? (Or have I misunderstood
your query?)

Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 17-Feb-07                                       Time: 00:39:37
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

'count.fields' is often useful in such situations to see how
R's view of the file differs from your own.  (It isn't such
a rare occurrence for differences to happen when the file
comes from Excel.)

If I understand properly, you can use

sep='\n'

as part of your alternative plan.  But I don't think you would
need to write a file and read it back in again.


Patrick Burns
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")


H. Paul Benton wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I'm looking for a way to be able to read a text file into R. It's a
csv
>file but when I do
>"txt <-read.table("F00.csv", header=T,
sep=",")" It doesn't read the
>file properly, and I only get 2 columns. If I open it up in OOc or Excel
>it open right with 7 columns.
>What I would really like to do is read the file as text and then split
>it and read the bottom section where the 7 columns are. Then I would
>re-read the table with read.table.
>
>    Thank you for any help,
>
>    Paul
>
>  
>