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XML to CSV

Andrew... you really need to understand the outline/tree nature of your XML schema to understand why blanks might appear in your data when you try to squeeze it into a rectangular layout like CSV. Opening the file in a modern Web browser like Firefox can help you see the forest among the trees, since they can collapse/expand the subtrees. Keep in mind that understanding how XML works is really not the purpose of this list, but there are lots of books and tutorials about it such as the one mentioned by Ben. If your schema has many irregular subtrees it may be a poor match for fitting into one CSV and you might need to resort to putting it into a relational group of CSV files... but relational schema design is another off-topic area of study for this list. Once you know what you want to accomplish a little better (enough to make example input and output data sets) we can help you more with the R coding aspect of your problem... but guessing at your needs with no access to data is really not effective use of anyone's time.