R help - Jan 2011 - xlsReadWrite 1.5.4 and xlsReadWritePro 1.6.4 released

The xlsReadWrite[Pro] package allows to natively read and write Excel
files (.xls) on the Win 32-bit platform.

Changes:

o fix bug with integer conversion (http://dev.swissr.org/issues/113)

  PROBLEM: values outside the integer range (i.e. 12345678901) didn't give
an NA
           (and a warning message) but have been converted to a wrong value
  WHERE:
    - free/pro: reading an Excel sheet and explicitely defining:
'colClasses = "integer"'
      or 'type = "integer". It's assumed that only very few
people do this.
    - pro: when (auto) detecting a data.frame column type for numeric
values the type becomes
      an 'integer' in some situations. This probably affects more
people than above
  SOLUTION:
    - an error will be raised for too large/small values (same as in read.table)
    - numeric data.frame column types default to 'double' (as in the
free version)

o adapt RUnit tests to new behaviour
o some small cosmetic changes

Credits to Gyorgy Ottucsak who found the problem in xlsReadWritePro
and send us a report (incl. testfile). Thanks a lot!

The new xlsReadWrite version will be submitted to CRAN in a moment.
Both updated packages are available now from www.swissr.org/download
or - full listing - here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2602516/swissrpkg/index.html.

Cheers,
Hans-Peter