That is my problem. The spacing between columns is not consistent. It
may be single space or multiple spaces (two or three).
On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 6:14 PM Bill Dunlap <williamwdunlap at gmail.com>
wrote:>
> You said the column values were separated by space characters.
> Copying the text from gmail shows that some column names and column
> values are separated by single spaces (e.g., between x1 and x2) and
> some by multiple spaces (e.g., between x3 and x4. Did the mail mess
> up the spacing or is there some other way to tell where the omitted
> values are?
>
> -Bill
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:54 PM Val <valkremk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I Tried that one and it did not work. Please see the error message
> > Error in read.table(text = "x1 x2 x3 x4\n1 B12 \n2 C23
> > \n322 B32 D34 \n4 D44 \n51 D53\n60 D62
",
> > :
> > more columns than column names
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 5:39 PM Bill Dunlap <williamwdunlap at
gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Since the columns in the file are separated by a space character,
" ",
> > > add the read.table argument sep=" ".
> > >
> > > -Bill
> > >
> > > On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:21 PM Val <valkremk at gmail.com>
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi all, I am trying to read a messy data but facing
difficulty. The
> > > > data has several columns separated by blank space(s). Each
column
> > > > value may have different lengths across the rows. The
first
> > > > row(header) has four columns. However, each row may not have
the four
> > > > column values. For instance, the first data row has only
the first
> > > > two column values. The fourth data row has the first and
last column
> > > > values, the second and the third column values are missing
for this
> > > > row.. How do I read this data set correctly? Here is my
sample data
> > > > set, output and desired output. To make it clear to each
data point
> > > > I have added the row and column numbers. I cannot use fixed
width
> > > > format reading because each row may have different length
for a
> > > > given column.
> > > >
> > > > dat<-read.table(text="x1 x2 x3 x4
> > > > 1 B22
> > > > 2 C33
> > > > 322 B22 D34
> > > > 4 D44
> > > > 51 D53
> > > > 60 D62 ",header=T,
fill=T,na.strings=c("","NA"))
> > > >
> > > > Output
> > > > x1 x2 x3 x4
> > > > 1 1 B12 <NA> NA
> > > > 2 2 C23 <NA> NA
> > > > 3 322 B32 D34 NA
> > > > 4 4 D44 <NA> NA
> > > > 5 51 D53 <NA> NA
> > > > 6 60 D62 <NA> NA
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Desired output
> > > > x1 x2 x3 x4
> > > > 1 1 B22 <NA> NA
> > > > 2 2 <NA> C33 NA
> > > > 3 322 B32 NA D34
> > > > 4 4 <NA> NA D44
> > > > 5 51 <NA> D53 NA
> > > > 6 60 D62 <NA> NA
> > > >
> > > > Thank you,
> > > >
> > > > ______________________________________________
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> > > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible
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