Importing multiple text files with lapply.
Hi Jim, Ultimately, I'm going to want to count the frequency of dates by particular time periods (months, quarters, years) for each state and then plot the data. I know there are commands in ggplots that will do that, so I'm not too worried about that, but I was stuck on getting 50 text files (one for each state) read into R. For the record, using read.table individually on a state file will get in a useable format, but wasn't working in conjunction with lapply. To reiterate, the home file has 50 .txt files each with a column of dates in the format I sent you. I will try readLines and see if I can get it to loop through. Yours, Simon Kiss
On 2011-01-17, at 7:44 PM, jim holtman wrote:
It sounds like you want to use 'readLines' and not 'read.table'
x <- readLines(textConnection("January 11, 2009
+ January 11, 2009 + October 19, 2008 + October 13, 2008 + August 16, 2008 + June 19, 2008 + April 19, 2008 + April 16, 2008 + February 9, 2008 + September 2, 2007"))
closeAllConnections() x
[1] "January 11, 2009" "January 11, 2009" "October 19, 2008" "October 13, 2008" "August 16, 2008" [6] "June 19, 2008" "April 19, 2008" "April 16, 2008" "February 9, 2008" "September 2, 2007"
What exactly are you going to do with the data after you read it in? On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Simon Kiss <simonjkiss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
Dear jim, Yes, it's true, the data are separated onto new lines as follows: January 11, 2009 January 11, 2009 October 19, 2008 October 13, 2008 August 16, 2008 June 19, 2008 April 19, 2008 April 16, 2008 February 9, 2008 September 2, 2007 I tried your attempt and it didn't work either; it returned the error message: Error in FUN(X[[1L]], ...) : 'file' must be a character string or connection On 2011-01-17, at 2:02 PM, jim holtman wrote:
try: mylist <- lapply(a, read.table, header = TRUE, sep = '\n') also is the separator really '\n' meaning a new-line? What exactly does the data look like? On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Simon Kiss <simonjkiss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
Hello, I'm trying to read in 50 text filess with dates as content to create a list of tables. a is the list of filenames that need to be read in. The following command returns the following error mylist<-lapply(a, read.table(header=TRUE, sep="\n")) Error in read.table(header = TRUE, sep = "\n") : element 1 is empty; the part of the args list of 'is.character' being evaluated was: (file) Does anyone have any suggestions? Yours, Simon Kiss ********************************* Simon J. Kiss, PhD Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University 73 George Street Brantford, Ontario, Canada N3T 2C9 Cell: +1 519 761 7606
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-- Jim Holtman Data Munger Guru What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
********************************* Simon J. Kiss, PhD Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University 73 George Street Brantford, Ontario, Canada N3T 2C9 Cell: +1 519 761 7606
-- Jim Holtman Data Munger Guru What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
********************************* Simon J. Kiss, PhD Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University 73 George Street Brantford, Ontario, Canada N3T 2C9 Cell: +1 519 761 7606