R help - May 2011 - write.table vs. read.table and the argument "fill"

Just wondering how come read.table lets you specify fill=TRUE for ragged 
arrays, but so far as I can tell, no equivalent for write.table?

Not a big deal, since I'm perfectly comfortable w/ write and scan and 
the other file I/O goodies.  "A foolish inconsistency..."  and all
that.


Carl

Hi Carl,

What would the "equivalent" argument for write.table do?  Or perhaps
to rephrase my question what type of R object do you have in mind to
write that is a "ragged array"?

Josh

On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Carl Witthoft <carl at witthoft.com>
wrote:
> Just wondering how come read.table lets you specify fill=TRUE for ragged
> arrays, but so far as I can tell, no equivalent for write.table?
>
> Not a big deal, since I'm perfectly comfortable w/ write and scan and
the
> other file I/O goodies. ?"A foolish inconsistency..." ?and all
that.
>
>
> Carl
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org 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.
>


-- 
Joshua Wiley
Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
http://www.joshuawiley.com/

On May 7, 2011, at 10:38 AM, Carl Witthoft wrote:
> Just wondering how come read.table lets you specify fill=TRUE for  
> ragged arrays, but so far as I can tell, no equivalent for  
> write.table?
>
I imagine the answer is something along the lines of ....read.table  
creates a rectangular structure and write.table outputs a rectangular  
structure, so they are congruent. If I wanted to accomplish writing a  
ragged list I would consider using lapply , paste,  and writeLines.

> Not a big deal, since I'm perfectly comfortable w/ write and scan  
> and the other file I/O goodies.  "A foolish inconsistency..." 
and
> all that.
-- 
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT