From: "Liaw, Andy" <andy_liaw at merck.com>
To: "'R_xprt_wannabe'" <r_xprt_wannabe at yahoo.com>, r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: RE: [R] Reading data from "clipboard"
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 15:53:45 -0500
From: R_xprt_wannabe
Dear List,
As a way to learn R, I am trying out some of the
examples shown in the Reference Cards.
I use the following to read a column of numbers from
Excel:
x <- read.delim("clipboard")
My questions are:
1. Why is it that the first number is omitted from the
selected data range? How do I tell R to pick up the
first number as part of the entire selection?
It's probably because read.delim() has the argument `header' that is TRUE
by
default, so unless you set that to FALSE, it treats the first row as column
headers.
2. The next thing I want to do once my data are read
in the way described above is
y <- ppoints(sort(x))
but I get the following:
Error in sort(x): 'x' must be atomic
What does 'atomic' mean in this context? How do I
make 'x' atomic?
read.delim() outputs a data frame, which is a collection of variables. In
your case it's probably just one variable. You can do x <- x[[1]] to
change
x into the first column of the data frame.
If you only have one column of data, scan() would be a better choice than
read.delim() (and friends).
3. While I understand there are other ways to
accomplish the same thing, I seem to recall there is a
way to invoke within R a spreadsheet-like window for
data input, but I can't seem to locate the command for
the life of me.
You're probably looking for data.entry().