CSV value not being read as it appears

As a further note, this is a reminder that whenever you get data via 
a spreadsheet the first thing to do is examine it and clean up any 
problems. A basic requirement is to tabulate any categorical 
variable. Spreadsheets allow any sort of data to be entered, with no 
controls. My experience is that those who enter data into 
spreadsheets enter all sorts of variations of what a human would 
wish to treat as the same ("Open", "Open ", "open", etc.), even when 
told not to.

David Scott

On 14/01/2011 4:03 p.m., Jim Holtman wrote:

try strip.white=TRUE to strip out white space

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 13, 2011, at 21:44, bgreen at dyson.brisnet.org.au wrote:

I have a frustrating issue which I am hoping someone may have a suggestion
about.

I am running XP and R 2.12.0 and saved an EXCEL file that I was sent as a
csv file.

The initial code I ran follows.

dec<- read.csv("g://FMH/FO30122010.csv",header=T)
dec.open<- subset (dec, Status == "Open")
table(dec.open$AMHS)

I was checking the output and noticed a difference between my manual count
and R output. Two subject's rows were not being detected by the subset
command:

For the AMHS where there was a discrepancy I then ran:
wm<- subset (dec, AMHS == "WM")

The problem appears to be that there is a space before the 'Open" value
for two indivduals, as per the example below.

10/02/2010  Open
22/08/2007   Open

Checking in EXCEL there does not appear to be a space and the format is
the same (e.g 'general').  I resolved the problem by copying over the
values for the two individuals where I identified  a problem.

Given this problem was not detected by visual scanning I would appreciate
advice on how this problem can be detected in future without my having to
manually check raw data against R output.

Any assistance is appreciated,

Bob

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