R help - May 2007 - Why a multi column, tab delimited file has only one column after reading in with read.table specification sep="\t"

Dear all:
I have a tab delimited file as following

AGE WEIGHT    PROTEIN   ........
6	20	3	........
8	39	4	........

I tried to read it as following:

 data <- read.table(file,sep="\t",header=T);

but there is only column for the data after reading in,:

dim(data);
[1] 200 1

the column name is "AGE...WEIGHT...........PROTEIN...."


Any quick suggestion will be appreciated.

Best Regards

Are you sure that there are tabs?  

 try sep="" 
?read.table seems to say that this should work

Otherwise try read.delimited.  


--- Yong Wang <wangyong1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all:
> I have a tab delimited file as following
> 
> AGE WEIGHT    PROTEIN   ........
> 6	20	3	........
> 8	39	4	........
> 
> I tried to read it as following:
> 
>  data <- read.table(file,sep="\t",header=T);
> 
> but there is only column for the data after reading
> in,:
> 
> dim(data);
> [1] 200 1
> 
> the column name is
> "AGE...WEIGHT...........PROTEIN...."
> 
> 
> Any quick suggestion will be appreciated.
> 
> Best Regards
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
> reproducible code.
>

Yong Wang wrote:
> Dear all:
> I have a tab delimited file as following
>
> AGE WEIGHT    PROTEIN   ........
> 6	20	3	........
> 8	39	4	........
>
> I tried to read it as following:
>
>  data <- read.table(file,sep="\t",header=T);
>
> but there is only column for the data after reading in,:
>
> dim(data);
> [1] 200 1
>
> the column name is "AGE...WEIGHT...........PROTEIN...."
>
>
> Any quick suggestion will be appreciated.
>
>   
The most obvious guess is that your file is not really TAB delimited, 
but have columns separated by whitespace, i.e. a number of blanks. Some 
text editors or emailers will convert one into the other.

On Sun, 20 May 2007, Yong Wang wrote:
> Dear all:
> I have a tab delimited file as following
Probably you do NOT have a tab delimited file after all.

>
> AGE WEIGHT    PROTEIN   ........
> 6	20	3	........
> 8	39	4	........
>
> I tried to read it as following:
>
> data <- read.table(file,sep="\t",header=T);
>
What do

 	table( count.fields( file ) )

and

 	table( count.fields( file, sep='\t' ) )

tell you?

If the former gives the right number of fields, then you have white space 
without tabs separating the data elements.

If they both tell you that you have only one filed in each line, your 
lines quoted, perhaps.

Otherwise, can you "provide commented, minimal, self-contained, 
reproducible code" as requested below to demonstrate this behavior??
> but there is only column for the data after reading in,:
>
> dim(data);
> [1] 200 1
>
> the column name is "AGE...WEIGHT...........PROTEIN...."
>
>
> Any quick suggestion will be appreciated.
>
> Best Regards
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
Charles C. Berry                        (858) 534-2098
                                          Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	         UC San Diego
http://biostat.ucsd.edu/~cberry/         La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901