read.fwf and header

On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 19:51 +0100, Gregor Gorjanc wrote:

Hi!

I have data (also in attached file) in the following form:

num1 num2 num3 int1 fac1 fac2 cha1 cha2 Date POSIXt
 1                1   f q   1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 2 1.0 1316666.5  2 a g r z            1900-01-01 01:01:01
 3 1.5 1188830.5  3 b h s y 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 4 2.0 1271846.3  4 c i t x 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 5 2.5  829737.4    d j u w 1900-01-01
 6 3.0 1240967.3  5 e k v v 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 7 3.5  919684.4  6 f l w u 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 8 4.0  968214.6  7 g m x t 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
 9 4.5 1232076.4  8 h n y s 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
10 5.0 1141273.4  9 i o z r 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01
   5.5  988481.4 10 j     q 1900-01-01 1900-01-01 01:01:01

This is a FWF (fixed width format) file. I can not use read.table here,
because of missing values. I have tried with the following

read.fwf(file="test.txt", widths=c(3, 4, 10, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 20),

header=TRUE)

Error in read.table(file = FILE, header = header, sep = sep, as.is =
as.is,  :
	more columns than column names

I could use:

read.fwf(file="test.txt", widths=c(3, 4, 10, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 20),

header=FALSE, skip=1)
   V1  V2        V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8          V9                 V10
1   1  NA        NA  1    f  q     1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
2   2 1.0 1316666.5  2 a  g  r  z              1900-01-01 01:01:01
3   3 1.5 1188830.5  3 b  h  s  y  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
4   4 2.0 1271846.3  4 c  i  t  x  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
5   5 2.5  829737.4 NA d  j  u  w  1900-01-01
6   6 3.0 1240967.3  5 e  k  v  v  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
7   7 3.5  919684.4  6 f  l  w  u  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
8   8 4.0  968214.6  7 g  m  x  t  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
9   9 4.5 1232076.4  8 h  n  y  s  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
10 10 5.0 1141273.4  9 i  o  z  r  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01
11 NA 5.5  988481.4 10 j        q  1900-01-01  1900-01-01 01:01:01

Does anyone have a clue, how to get above result with header?

Thanks!

The attachment did not come through. Perhaps it was too large?

Not sure if this is the most efficient way, but how about this:

DF <- read.fwf("test.txt", 
                widths=c(3, 4, 10, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 20),
                skip = 1, strip.white = TRUE,
                col.names = read.table("test.txt", 
                                       nrow = 1, as.is = TRUE)[1, ])

Not sure if this is the most efficient way, but how about this:

DF <- read.fwf("test.txt",
                widths=c(3, 4, 10, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 11, 20),
                skip = 1, strip.white = TRUE,
                col.names = read.table("test.txt",
                                       nrow = 1, as.is = TRUE)[1, ])

Of course, with the limited number of columns, you can always just set

colnames(DF) <- c("num1", "num2", "num3", "int1", "fac1",
                  "fac2", "cha1", "cha2", "Date", "POSIXt")