strange behavior when reading csv - line wraps

It is still not clear to me exactly how you want to read the lines 
in.  If the lines have a variable number of fields, and some of the 
lines might be wrapped, is there some way to determine where the start 
of each line is.
 
If you are reading them in with read.csv, then the system is assuming 
that each line starts a new row.  If this is not the case, then you 
will have to state the rules that determine where the lines start.  
You can always read the data in with 'scan' to separate each line and 
then do whatever processing is required to put together the rows in a 
data frame that you want.
 
In one of your examples, you indicated that the line was split 
starting at the word "kempten"; if this is in the middle of the line, 
then you would have to create the break after reading the line in with 
'scan' and then creating the rows in the dataframe.  All of this can 
be done in R if you can state what the criteria is.
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Martin Tomko <martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch 
<mailto:martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch>> wrote:

    Jim,
    the two lines I put in are the actual problematic input lines.
    In these examples, there are no quotes nor # signs, although I
    have no means to make sure they do not occur in the inputs (any
    hints how I could deal with that?).
    I am trying to avoid as much pre-processing outside R as possible,
    and I have to process about 500 files with up to 3000 records
    each, so I need a more or less automated/batch solution. - so any
    string substitution will have to occur in R. But for the moment, I
    do not see a reaason for substitution, and the wrapping still occurs.

    Cheers
    Martin



    jim holtman wrote:

        You need to supply the actual input line so we can see what is
        happening.  Are you sure you do not have unbalanced quotes in
        your input (try quote='') or do you have comment characters
        ("#") in your input?

        On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Martin Tomko
        <martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch <mailto:martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch>
        <mailto:martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch
        <mailto:martin.tomko at geo.uzh.ch>>> wrote:

           Dear All,
           I am observing a strange behavior and searching the
        archives and
           help pages didn't help much.
           I have a csv with a variable number of fields in each line.

           I use
           dataPoints <- read.csv(inputFile, head=FALSE, sep=";",fill
        =TRUE);

           to read it in, and it works. But - some lines are long and
        'wrap',
           or split and continue on the next line. So when I check the
        dim of
           the frame, they are not correct and I can see when I do a
        printout
           that the lines is split into two in the frame. I checked
        the input
           file and all is good.

           an example of the input is:
         
         37;2175168475;13;8.522729;47.19537;16366682 at N00;30;sculpture;bird;tourism;animal;statue;canon;eos;rebel;schweiz;switzerland;eagle;swiss;adler;skulptur;zug;1750;28;tamron;f28;canton;tourismus;vogel;baar;kanton;xti;tamron1750;1750mm;tamron1750mm;400d;rabbitriotnet;

           where the last values occurs on the next line in the data
        frame.

           It does not have to be the last value, as in the follwong
        example,
           the word "kempten" starts the next line:
         
         39;167757703;12;10.309295;47.724545;21903142 at N00;36;white;building;tower;clock;clouds;germany;bayern;deutschland;bavaria;europa;europe;eagle;adler;eu;wolke;dome;townhall;rathaus;turm;weiss;allemagne;europeanunion;bundesrepublik;gebaeude;glocke;brd;allgau;kuppel;europ;kempten;niemcy;europo;federalrepublic;europaischeunion;europaeischeunion;germanio;

           What could be the reason?

           I ws thinking about solving the issue by using a different
           separator, that I would use for the first 7 fields and
           concatenating all of the remaining values into a single stirng
           value, but could not figure out how to do such a
        substitution in
           R. Unfortunately, on my system I cannot specify a range for
        sed...

           Thanks for any help/pointers
           Martin